The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies doesn’t even come out for another two weeks, but Peter Jackson is already making plans for his extended edition of the film.  Steve is currently at The Hobbit press conference in London where Jackson just revealed that there will be an extended cut of the film on the Blu-ray with around 30 minutes of additional footage.  The extended edition of An Unexpected Journey clocks in at 183 minutes long (13 minutes of additional footage) and the extended cut of The Desolation of Smaug is 186 minutes long (25 minutes of additional footage) so when the time comes to marathon the entire The Hobbit trilogy, we’ll be spending about 543 minutes in Middle Earth, which is actually significantly less than the Lord of the Rings extended trilogy’s 680-minute grand total.

Hit the jump for more on Jackson’s plans for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies extended cut.

Jackson may already know about how many minutes he’s adding to the theatrical cut of the film for the extended addition, but he does still need the time to actually put the thing together.  Jackson noted that this should take him around four or five months to get done after he returns home.  Assuming that happens at the end of the month, he should have The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies extended cut complete in the middle of 2015.

We’ll have more material from The Hobbit press day for you in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, click here for more The Battle of the Five Armies coverage or browse the recent links below:

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