[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

I know they are covering some ground that was mentioned in the book and never shown:

Spoiler!

like the White Council and Gandalf and Co. taking care of business down in Dol Guldur.

Spoiler!

The cast list also contains Thrain (presumably Thrain II, Thorin's father). It would make sense if the scope of the movies goes back to Gandalf infiltrating Dol Guldur, finding Thrain II prisoner there, and discovering the return of Sauron. That would set up the story to move forward on two fronts: the traditional Hobbit story, plus the whole White Council plot line, Saruman searching for the ring on his own, and the White Council attacking Dol Guldur.

I think a lot of people will be upset that there's a lot included that doesn't fit with the original story, but I think it's an approach that Tolkien would have been very approving of, since it fills in all of the backstory that he later wrote about in the LOTR appendices.