With Peter Jacksonâs The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey now playing around the world, it's time to post the last interview I did at the NYC press day and it's with screenwriter Philippa Boyens. While Jackson gets most of the credit for the Lord of the Rings, Boyens has been an absolutely crucial part of the adaptations, having co-written Fellowship, The Two Towers, Return of the King, all three Hobbit films, and also acting as a co-producer on The Hobbit trilogy. She's a key player in helping to bring J. R. R. Tolkien's work to life.During my extended interview we talked about the themes of The Hobbit, the differences between Hobbit and LOTR, setting up the LOTR movies in the beginning of The Hobbit, the eventual Blu-ray extended cut, deleted scenes, whether The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will be the same length as An Unexpected Journey, what they still need to still film next year, changes on set, what props she has taken home, and more. Hit the jump for more.And if you missed my video interviews with Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain, and Weta Digitalâs Sr. Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri, click the links. Finally, here's all our Hobbit coverage which includes hundreds of articles.Collider: Are you enjoying your full day of press?Philippa Boyens: (Laughs) I am actually, I am.Well, you guys have been working on this for years; it must be nice to finally talk about it.Boyens: It is and it isnât. Because as a screenwriter you have to let go and you have to hand your baby over, and let it go off into the world, which is entirely appropriate. Itâs just for a couple of years youâve had that ability to sort of fix it, but now you let it go. Which is actually fine, and entirely appropriate, weâre letting it sail off into the world.I saw the film the other day in 48 frames per second, thought it was great. I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I say considering what George Lucas was not able to accomplish with the prequels, I think you guys did a pretty good job.Boyens: Thank you. It is hard to go back into a world that has already been explored, so to speak. And the fans are very passionate about it and you donât want to burst that bubble, you donât want to break that illusion. You want to get it right. You want it to feel familiar, but also surprising. Thatâs exactly what we strived to do and it was satisfying I would say. For me thereâs been a few key people that I wanted to see it, that I was nervous to see it, that I knew were big Tolkien fans and theyâre response has been fantastic so Iâm feeling a bit more comfortable. I think that one of the problems people have is that the Lord of the Rings trilogy deals with like a nuclear war in Middle-earth, the stakes are as high as they can be.Boyens: Yes.While in The Hobbit, youâre dealing with Bilbo and Gandalf trying to help some dwarves reclaim their home and get some gold and, and clearly the stakes are not as high and I do think that tends to impact what some people think of the movie. The stakes just arenât as high, at least in my opinion.Boyens: Yeah, I think they are, and I think one of the most incredible moments to happen in the Tolkien canon happens in that little story when Bilbo doesnât kill Gollum. And as Gandalf goes on to point out, the pity of Bilbo ruled the fate of many. It is an extraordinary moment and I think itâs extraordinarily played by Martin Freeman. I think the notion that the seeds of impending doom exist within the film. But you are putting your finger on something that is really important, and itâs something that as writers we knew going in, which is how to tackle this story, which was written as a childrens story. Now that itâs set against the greatest trilogy, which came first. Iâm pretty sure that if we hadnât done the Lord of the Rings first this would be a very different film.One of the things I think you guys hit a huge home-run on in The Hobbit is the way you bridged the beginning of the movie with Lord of the Rings. Obviously you know movie two and three and I donât, but I think when this is all said and done people are going to want to show their kids The Hobbit, starting with movie one and build their way up to Lord of the Rings. I just think you guys did a great job of setting up the seeds in movie one. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys figured out how to start the movie?Boyens: It wasnât set in stone, it was something we tried. We had a sense that we wanted to hand the character of Bilboâand for so many people and in so many peopleâs minds he is Sir Ian Holmâwe wanted to hand that to the new Bilbo, to this younger version of himself. But also, we had to grapple with the backstory of the Dwarves and of why theyâre doing this, why theyâre doing what theyâre doing. In the book it is told in a couple of places, one of which is as backstory in Bag End when Thorin explains some of what happened. And we did try that, we did actually try writing a version of where it was told there. Bag End is long enough; it didnât need to get any longer with a flashback. But also, when I knew it was working was when you tell the story of the young dwarf friends, and then Bilbo has these dwarves invade his very tidy comfortable little hobbit-hole and you hear a knock on the door and Gandalf says, âHeâs here.â And that door opens and it's him, itâs that guy, itâs that dwarf. Itâs the dwarf you saw at the beginning of the story. Thatâs when I knew it was working, because I imagined having that happen, having the knock on the door, having Gandalf say âHeâs here.â and the door opens, and it just wouldnât have the same impact because he would have been just another dwarf. It has resonance now. The other thing that I liked about it personally, as someone who loves the notion of how Tolkien continued to tell the tale, I like that about him that he couldnât help himself. He wrote The Hobbit and then he kept adding bits to it. I love it. He didnât care; he just was a pure storyteller. What I liked about that, and what we partially pay homage to and the fun of this story, and we try to tell the audience and critics and fans and everybody whoâs coming to see this story, that while you might know or think you know the whole story, thereâs more. Thereâs more to tell.  And thatâs when he says to him, âwhile I have told you the truth, I may not have told you all of it.â And that has its seeds in all different levels and layers of Tolkienâs storytelling, including the fact that as we discover in The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo didnât tell Frodo the entire truth of what happened with Gollum and how he got the ring.The movieâs about two hours and forty minutes, for me I donât have a problem; I could have watched a three hour version of The Hobbit. But thereâs definitely an issue with the casual moviegoer that once you hit two hours some of them start to get sort of antsy, if you will. Did you guys ever feel any pressure to make it shorter knowing that, âHey we had such a successful run with extended editions on the Blu-ray that we could make it two hours and twenty minutes and save twenty minutes for the Blu-ray.â How did you get to that length that finally got released?Boyens: Well, we got to it by allowing the film to find its own level and thatâs, honest to God, thatâs exactly what happened. When we sat down and decided there was stuff that was left out, not a huge amount I have to say, but there was stuff that was left out and also stuff that we wanted to include that we got the chance to include because now itâs three stories. The film found its own level. It really, truly did. And it ended up that when the effects sequences came in; it came in within thirty to forty seconds of what we thought it was going to be. I know one of the things you guys cut out was the market stuff, especially with a certain cameo by Fredegar (played by Ainât It Cool News writer Eric Vespe aka Quint).Boyens: (Laughs) Thatâs great.Iâm definitely curious, was it heartbreaking to cut out Fredegar from the movie and how long was that market sequence?Boyens: You know what, it was one of the hardest pieces. And look, I understand that for many people Return of the King had far too many endings, and I will acknowledge that, but I cannot tell you how important those endings have been for certain people, and every day you get a letter from somebody quoting those endings because it means something to them personally. In a very similar way this film has too many beginnings, and unfortunately, that would have been yet another beginning. So that was one of the reasons that had to go. While you know and understand that in an ideal world you would never have a story with thirteen dwarves if you were writing a regular, standard-formula film, in the same way we understood that in a normal story you wouldnât have that many beginnings. But you have to because itâs The Hobbit and you canât get rid of the âGood Morningâ scene, you canât get rid of the dwarves all tumbling into Bag End the way they do, you also have to introduce them to the audience, and I also donât think you would want to get rid of the moment where you have Bilbo waking up in the morning, which I think Martin Freeman did brilliantly, by the way - that moment where he makes that choice to run out his door. So all of those moment are not what you would classically put in a film of this nature, but somehow you just eventually go back to a film finds its own level. Thatâs what we tried to do. And in the end you can only trust the own choices and your own judgment. Yeah, let me just go on record, because I usually post audio with my interviews, so let me just go on record and say that I think the ending of Return of the King is flawless and screw anyone who has problems with too many endings.Boyens: (Laughs) And I also understand. I can go on record and say I understand, I get it, I totally do get it. Itâs not conventional and itâs not necessarily ideal. But thank you for saying that because there is stuff going on in there that other people donât tell. And what did understand and did knowâand thank god we did do this for a number of different reasonsâfor people for whom that particular story means a hell of a lot more than it would to another filmgoer and thatâs mostly people either facing death or have lost somebody.  The fact that you have to tell the price of what Frodo paid for that adventure, it was hugely important that we include that.Oh yeah, make no mistake Return of the King is a masterpiece, anyone who doesnât think so stop reading, donât care.Boyens: [Laughs] I love it. Thank you.As a huge fan of The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, all of this stuff; obviously I know, you donât have to confirm it, that thereâs going to be an extended edition of the Blu-ray coming, because of course there is.Boyens: Yeah.My question about how much longer can fans look forward to the extra footage being? Is there five minutes? Is there fifteen minutes?Boyens: I can very honestly tell you that that is still literally being figured out. Itâs literally an ongoing discussion in terms of the effects, and what works and what doesnât. So how much and how long itâs going to be, you know I donât honestly think itâs going to be hugely that much longer, because truthfully most of the stuff that we needed to get in for the storytelling is in there. But Iâve got one personal thing that I love that I wish was in there and youâll see it, itâs a little thing between Bilbo and Elrond. Itâs probably, within the context of the greater whole, the six films; itâs going to work really beautifully when you see Bilbo in Rivendell in Lord of the Rings. But we had to be very, very careful that werenât being too self-referential and that we werenât writing for the prequel. You know what I mean? That we werenât just writing stuff just because it was going to have a certain resonance with Lord of the Rings. We tried to be careful that we didnât do that too much.Obviously you guys have two more Hobbit films and Iâm sure that youâve been looking at rough cuts of the two of them. Do you think that the length of the second and third film will be similar to the length of The Hobbit, or do you think that either of those could end up being shorter?Boyens: No, I think theyâll be around the same or slightly shorter ideally. Itâll be interesting though, weâll see. I know from the rough cut of film two that at the moment you could say that it will be shorter.The next thing Iâm curious about, obviously you guys decided to make three films, Iâm curious how much more filming you have to do now. I did a set visit earlier this year so I knew you guys had already planned for doing additional shooting next year, my question is how much more shooting might you be doing because youâre making three films now, or is it still the same amount of filming?Boyens: No, we have added some to the schedule, we definitely had to because as soon as we made the choice to be able to tell the story of [inaudible] and to make the choice of being able to tell the story of Azog and those sort of things, we opened up the opportunity to tell more of the tale, which is what weâre going to do.If you donât mind me being more specific, because I know fans really would want to know, do you guys have two months of filming next year? Do you have three months? Or have you not figured it out yet?Boyens: At the moment, honestly, Iâm probably the wrong person to ask, but I think itâs around eight weeks. So it went from like four weeks to eight weeks. A lot of it is to do with The Battle of the Five Armies, which is something we did learn from Lord of the Rings, and knowing Pete itâs just going to be even more incredible than anything heâs done before. You have to care about that action and that war and so thatâs one of the things we want to do. And I think weâve begun to set that up if you can imagine Bilbo now with the eagles.On both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, how much changes when you are on set, or do you really lay it out and break it down so much that itâs pretty much sticking with the script when youâre filming?Boyens: (Laughs) No, no we donât, we donât. No, we never let schedules get in the way of a good idea. Pete is a very brave filmmaker and heâs not afraid of changing things, especially if itâs a good idea. And we also thinkâyou know, this is an incredibly collaborative business and we want to be able to embrace any sorts of ideas that come at you, especially when theyâre good ones. So often a thought may be late in coming, but itâs often a good thought and Pete goes with it. What props did you manage to take home?Boyens: Ah, props that I managed to take home? Actually they gave me, I have to say. At the end of the film when thereâs a beautiful piece that Galadriel has on her dress. Itâs an extraordinary stone and thereâs another version of it which will lead me into a story that I canât tell you about but itâs made from a stone called labradorite which is a stone that Iâve never come across before. But anyone whoâs never encountered labradorite before should go and look it up, because itâs extraordinary. Itâs very dark and deep. Yes, I got a little piece of the stone.I will leave it on that note and say talk to you next year, congratulations on the movie.Boyens: Thanks so much, thatâs really nice of you, and yeah, talk to you next year.For more on The Hobbit, click here.
Screenwriter Philippa Boyens Talks THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, Bridging the Film to LOTR, the Extended Edition, Deleted Scenes, and More
Screenwriter Philippa Boyens Talks THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, the Extended Edition, Deleted Scenes, changes on set, 48fps. setting up LOTR.