When it comes to The Hobbit, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s books have likely been most curious to see how director Peter Jackson brings to life two of the villains from the book in the now three-part film adaptation.

Those two are of course the primary villain, Smaug the dragon, and the Goblin King, also known as the Great Goblin. Now comes a small peek at what’s assumed to be what this great goblin…in all his grotesque glory.

You can see the image below (don’t proceed if you’d like to avoid minor spoilers), as well as a couple of peeks at the Goblin King’s minions, and a screen capture from the very first Hobbit production diary that may confirm them.

The Goblin King, who is being played by Barry Humphries in the movie, and his people are described as follows:

The Goblin King is a huge, grotesquely bloated monster that in the years of his tyrannical rule over the miserable inhabitants of the Goblin town grew fat and flabby. The Goblin town is a collection of skew-whiff ramshackle huts deep in the caves of the Misty Mountains. He commands a bunch of foul, polluted, with scars and ulcers studded goblins.

Basically, they are bandits, they live by what they can pick up from passengers on the passes through the mountains. The Goblin King and his followers manage to capture Bilbo and the dwarves. The Goblin King is more wily and smarter than it seems “” he takes pleasure in torturing his prisoners.

I may be mistaken, as I’m not personally familiar with the books (yet), but these cuddly gentlemen look quite similar to the deformed general seen in The Return of the King, Gothmog. No idea if the two are connected somehow.

The images come from a German website (via a French Facebook page) that apparently got them from an action figure box.

Images

[Sources: Heirs of Durin via The One Ring]