When the news came out that filming on the first Hobbit film was likely to move back mid-summer 2010, everyone was speculating that would mean the release dat would have to moved as well. But in an interview with Collider Peter Jackson says that he still plans to release the first part of The Hobbit in December 2011 and the second in December 2012:
"Nothing has changed as far as I am concerned. Somebody wrote something on the internet and a lot of nonsense happened. You don’t want to believe everything you read on the internet. We were due to deliver the scripts and be shooting sometime around April and now I think I said in an interview we were shooting in June. And somehow people are now saying the film is delayed. As far as I am aware, they are not delayed at all. I am not even sure when we are going to start shooting…we are delivering the scripts just after Christmas they’ll be finished and we’ll be shooting as soon as we possibly can. But you need a certain amount of time to finish the pre-production."
