The newsstands are filling up with Hobbit content and we are very excited to exclusively reveal the front cover, and a bit of the intro from the Rolling Stone’s Hobbit Collectors Edition magazine. As you can see, the cover features Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and promises some unique and exciting content. New behind the scenes photos and exclusive interviews with the all-star cast will make this magazine a valuable addition to your growing Hobbit collection. Follow the break for an excerpt of the intro, and look for your copy on newsstands Friday, November 23rd (Yes, Black Friday!) or online at BarnesandNoble.com!
INTRODUCTION
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”; j.r.r. tolkien jotted that memorable first sentence down more than 75 years ago, and in doing so, the Oxford professor and WWI veteran gave birth to a whole genre of literature, inspiring everyone from the hippies of the Sixties to D&D fanatics, and a whole lot of folks who just love, as director Peter Jackson tells RS, “a great cracking yarn.”
Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit of the story, has to be up there with the Dude in The Big Lebowski as one of the greatest loafers in pop culture. Bilbo’s a man of leisure, a guy who likes good food, cheer and as little excitement as possible. So of course he is thrust from the safety of his small world in the bucolic Shire and sent forth on an adventure with 13 dwarves and a wizard to cross half of Middle-earth, face countless dangers, slay a dragon and regain a kingdom. Much of the story’s enduring appeal comes from Tolkien lacing a classic kids’ tale with deeper imagery borrowed from myths and legends, and his writing conveys his own sense of loss after watching a generation die in the trenches of Europe.
This special collectors edition serves as a companion piece to Jackson’s film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, in theaters December 14th, the first of three movies based on the slim children’s novel. Many wondered why such a short story had become a six-hour saga. In our exclusive interview on page 36, Jackson explains his reasons for extending the tale: He was able to adapt hundreds of pages of original Tolkien material not included in the book, Thorin Oak- enshield’s rich backstory, the war between dwarves and goblins, and the wizard Gandalf and the elf queen Galadrial’s efforts to thwart the rise of a dark power that we will come to know in The Lord of the Rings. These Hobbit movies should make suitably epic prequels to Jackson’s already classic LOTR trilogy. “We are doing a supersize version of The Hobbit,” Jackson says. And for millions of Tolkien fans, what could be better than that?
