The final installment in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy may be getting a title change.  When the J.R.R. Tolkein adaptation was initially planned (and shot) as two films, the title of the final installment was The Hobbit: There and Back Again.  When Jackson decided to expand the adaptation to three films, he dubbed the second film The Desolation of Smaug but maintained the There and Back Again subtitle for the third feature.  Well now it appears that New Line Cinema has registered the title The Hobbit: Into the Fire, signaling a possible title change for The Hobbit 3.  More after the jump.

The folks over at TheOneRing.net broke the news of New Line’s title registration, and while studios are constantly registering possible titles, this is the same outlet that broke news of The Desolation of Smaug subtitle so it comes with a certain amount of weight.  If you're wondering how "Into the Fire" ties into the Tolkein books, it's a reference to a chapter title from The Hobbit and was also spoken in Jackson’s film adaptation with the line, "Out of the frying pan, and into the fire."  Since the third Hobbit film will comprise of the massive Battle of Five Armies, it seems a quite fitting moniker—if not as elegant for a concluding chapter as There and Back Again.

There’s no confirmation that the title has been changed from The Hobbit: There and Back Again, so it’s also quite possible that the title remains and Into the Fire was registered by New Line as part of a separate movie tie-in.  There’s still quite a ways to go before the film’s release, but we should hear some official word one way or another in the next few months.  I expect Jackson and Co. will make the trip to Comic-Con in July, so maybe they’ll drop the news then.  Or, again, it’s also possible we could hear from Warner Bros. in the next few days that the film is still called The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

Regardless, the third and final installment in Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy opens in theaters on December 17th.