The First 'Hobbit' Movie Isn't Even Out Yet, but Here's a Look at Orlando Bloom in 'The Hobbit: There and Back Again'

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey doesn't hit theaters for another week. It's sequel, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, doesn't hit theaters until a year after that. Despite this, Entertainment Weekly debuted a photo from The Hobbit: There and Back Again, the third film in the series, which doesn't even premiere until summer of 2014, on Thursday.

Yes, that's Orlando Bloom's Legolas in the picture. If you're a die-hard The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings fan, you're probably screaming something about Legolas not appearing in The Hobbit. That won't stop Peter Jackson from making it happen though.

“He’s [elven king] Thranduil’s son, and Thranduil is one of the characters in The Hobbit, and because elves are immortal it makes sense Legolas would be part of the sequence in the Woodland Realm,” director Peter Jackson explains. Conferring with Legolas is one of the Hobbit trilogy’s major new faces: the heroic human Laketown warrior Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans).

At this point, these stories aren't even J.R.R. Tolkein's anymore — they're Jackson's. If you're wondering how the director stretched one book into three movies, you can start gathering evidence when The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hits theaters on Dec. 14, 2012. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug follows on Dec. 13, 2013, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again closes out the trilogy on July 18, 2014. Check out the full Legolas picture after the jump.