We've all known for a while now that Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson's teams of merry filmmakers were planning to make TWO movies out of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, but now we have confirmation of the plan by the filmmakers themselves, and they doled out a few small details to Empire Magazine in honor of the publication's 20th birthday. And those quotes go a little like this:

Del Toro: "We've decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur."

Jackson: "We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie. The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy."

As Empire's Chris Hewitt observes, this should put to bed those theories that one film would focus on The Hobbit and the second would be some sort of bridging appendices miscellaneous whatnot. Expect a lot more on The Hobbit over the next three years, including every nerdly little tidbit we can get our pipeweed-lovin' hands on.

Source.