On Tuesday morning, the new trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug was released online.

Earlier that morning, the film’s stars Ian McKellen and Orlando Bloom made an appearance on NBC’s The Today Show to talk about the upcoming second installment in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy and to introduce a snippet from the trailer.

Now, the actors’ appearance on the show is online and you can watch it here below.

Before the two were in the studio with Matt Lauer and company, they were out on the quad visiting with fans and signing autographs, which was shown on the live broadcast.

As I mentioned when I wrote about the trailer the other day, it sounds like when they go into the footage that McKellen tells host Natalie Morales that the title is pronounced “Smorg” (or “sm-aww-g”), not “Smowg” (like the “ou” sound in “ouch”) like she said it. In the video below, you can hear this interaction; you can also hear Al Roker called it “Smog.” I found all of this interesting because the matter of how to pronounced Smaug has been subject to lengthy debates for decades, and from what I can tell, director Peter Jackson says it like Morales did.

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, which is the follow-up to 2012’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, stars Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, and many more. WB will release the film into theaters on December 13, 2013, with the final installment, There And Back Again, coming to theaters in 2014.

Video

[Source: The Today Show]

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