We’ve had refreshingly little news from the set of The Hobbit in recent months – after the extraordinary faff that preceded the shoot actually starting, things appear to be ticking over fairly comfortably down in New Zealand. So it was with a slight air of nerviness that we opened the heavy, wax-sealed envelope delivered to Best For Film Towers this morning by a Great Eagle – surely Peter Jackson wouldn’t be getting in touch unless things had gone dreadfully wrong?

Thankfully, the news was good. Fifteen years after work began on the first Lord of the Rings film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will premiere in Wellington, NZ – the site of protests when the Hobbit production nearly left the country for a less troublesome shoot in England. For all we know (and we’re definitely not going to bother to find out), Peter Jackson is the only international director who even remembers that there are cinemas in New Zealand. Wellington also saw the premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, after the first two films in the trilogy made their first appearances in London and New York respectively.

It’s a shade over six months until An Unexpected Journey hits theatres – probably time to start working on a Dwalin costume for your local cinema’s midnight screening!

Would you make love to a Great Eagle? We would.