Anyone who has read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit will surely remember one of most exciting moments - Bilbo and the Dwarves' capture and escape from giant spiders in Mirkwood. But judging by the images depicted on the packaging for the Escape From Mirkwood Lego set, we will see things play out a little (or a lot if you are a purist) differently. You can clearly see both Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) minifigs rushing in to rescue Bilbo and company in the below image..
This would also seem to confirm that Legolas and Tauriel will be making an appearance in the first film, and not kept until the second as we previously thought. Also, according to the ever reliable Jonas Jakobsen, various cinema outlets in Norway are reporting that the running time for the first installment in the
Hobbit trilogy will be
2 hours 44 minutes. It seems Peter Jackson's decision to stretch the story out to three movies didn't impact the length of each individual one anyway - unless of course the follow ups have shorter run-times, but that's very unlikely. Anyway, this hasn't been officially confirmed yet, but I'd say it's on the money.