I hear you (and I may be in the minority that I liked Jackson's King Kong, sorry!) but the Frodo appearance could work if they made it like he was chatting with Sam and they did a flashback to the days of Smaug, etc. Could work. It's tough as Jackson did not completely cover every detail of LOTR either, but he did embrace the basic ideas and premises that I really loved in the three films. And I think fans will be smart enough to get the differences between the standalone book Hobbit and its morphing into a prequel. I'm sure they will start the film with "based on" The Hobbit. Thanks for the link. I am learning more on this. I saw the poll they did and most of the people who voted liked the idea of Frodo in the picture. I am concerned that they might not get Ian in there as Gandalf, however. To summarize: Let's not freak as it might work on some level, enough to entice more audiences to discover the original texts and read more Tolkien.

all I can say is that I am not making a comment until I see the final product. I can excuse the prequel approach as long as the film is made with the same heart and care as the LOTR franchise.

Other characters from LotR that did not appear in The Hobbit, who will now be appearing in Jackson's film...
Frodo Baggins
Galadriel (read more here)
Legolas (read more here)

Oh, yes, and despite the fact that Radagast the Brown doesn't appear in The Hobbit (he's merely mentioned in the dialogue) and his brief appearance in The Lord of the Rings wasn't even deemed worthy for the film, he is going to have an appearance as well.

Now for the clincher... hot dwarves? Yes, Jackson seems eager to cast as many attractive people to play dwarves despite the fact that dwarves are short, squat, and typically considered traditionally unattractive. Why is Jackson doing this? Apparently, he's doing it because he felt that the casting of Orlando Bloom was so successful that having more aesthetically pleasing characters would be a commercial advantage.

Oh, I do hope that he manages to get Justin Timberlake to play Gandalf!

Ta-da! Here's one addition to the film that I don't mind... Read this article!

Well, this time Jackson may have gone too far. As many of you likely know already, one of the major complaints about the "LotR" film trilogy was that emphasis on the Arwen character and her romance with Aragorn. Now, many die-hard Tolkien fans are cringing at the rumored inclusion of a love story that will feature prominently in The Hobbit film that features a character created by Jackson and not Tolkien. The controversy surrounds the addition of an elf-maiden named Itaril who does not exist in any of Tolkien's books. Fans have become so outraged by this latest development that there is a petition to try to get Jackson to change his mind and not deviate from the novel by including this character or sub-plot. There's even a Facebook page entitled "Don't put Itaril into The Hobbit". How do you all feel about this drastic departure from the source material?

Interesting discussion, Sean. 

I've always believed that when a director takes a work that was originally a novel, graphic novel, or other printed material (not originally written as a screenplay) to adapt to the big screen, the film does better when it follows the source material. It is a very rare scenario where the film can ever surpass or even be on par with the novel when it deviates too far.

I feel like the real question is whether Peter Jackson is talented enough to take another classic of Tolkien's and change it as much as it sounds like he's planning to. My answer is no, especially when reading all the new inclusions he's considering. I don't see the need for a lot of these changes (sexy dwarves? Come on!), and I think it will flop. The only thing we can hope is that, as James said, the film will at least inspire more people to read these classic tales. How it's supposed to do that with some of these new ideas is a bit befuddling to me. It sounds like Jackson is selling out to the public, at least what he thinks the public will want.

On a side note, people won't understand that The Hobbit is not a prequel. Just look at all the confusion the new Star Trek film caused (that was not a prequel either!). Will this misinformation harm the way people view the Lord of the Rings series? Maybe. Only time will tell.

More bad news... Apparently, due to prior contractual obligations, costume designer Ngila Dickson will not be returning to work with Peter Jackson on "The Hobbit". Read more here: http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2011/02/27/4...ing-on-hobbit-costumes/

That does suck.

Okay, here's some new news. Ian Holm has reportedly signed on to play an older version of Bilbo, who will serve the film in the role of a storyteller relaying the tale of The Hobbit... to Frodo and other young hobbits. Also, actor Hugo Weaving, who played Elrond in LotR, has been seen in Wellington, New Zealand. Does this mean that he has finally been confirmed as part of the cast and is prepping to shoot scenes? One can only hope!

In other casting news, almost all of the major roles have been announced, but there has already been a departure.  Robert Kazinsky has abruptly left the project. He had been cast as the role of Fili, one of the dwarves, but has somewhat mysteriously left the film while shooting had already commenced. Some have suggested it was for personal reasons while it's been hinted that Jackson wasn't happy with this choice. In the past Jackson has fired two fairly big actors from his films while the shooting was happening. Originally Stuart Townsend was going to play Aragorn, but Jackson felt he was too young and then recast the role with Viggo Mortensen while the film was shooting. Then when Jackson was shooting The Lovely Bones, which was panned by critics and most audiences as being shallow and over-saturated with effects, he replaced  Ryan Gosling with Mark Wahlberg. Could this be another case of Jackson deciding that he cast the role too young?

An interesting tidbit... Jackson will be shooting the film using a new frame rate per second system. The film will be shot at 48fps (frames per second) rather than the usual 24fps. This has been a somewhat an unexpected source of controversy from some critics and fans. The reason being that at a frame rate that high, the camera will lose motion blurs, and there will be less artificial contrast (caused by lower frame rate cameras and brighter lighting). What this will ultimately for the film's look is hard to tell at this point, but it likely has to do with the fact that the film is being shown in 3D.

The hits just keep on coming...
http://www.movies.com/movie-news/evangeline-lilly-the-hobbit/3372

So, the first images of the dwarves have been revealed and they look... ridiculous!

Here are the dwarves as seen in the LotR films along with production designer Richard Taylor (the one without a beard). The dwarves in LotR are based very much on Tolkien's description and are inspired by the depiction of dwarfs in Finnish and Norse mythology.
And here's John Rhys-Davies as Gimli, the quintessential dwarf in LotR.

All in all, faithful to Tolkien's description and faithful to the description of dwarves throughout European myths.
...
And here are the new dwarves from The Hobbit...


Again, let's compare.

Dwarves the way Tolkien envisioned them, the way Jackson portrayed them originally, and they way they should be.


And dwarves as they appear in The Hobbit.

As I said, RIDICULOUS!

Interesting change that Jackson made. I guess he wanted to make the dwarves sexier or something.

Balin and Dwalin.