There has been some speculation recently on whether or not Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit could be turned into a trilogy. The classic Tolkien tale is currently on track to be released as two features, but the filmmakers are spearheading to change that and if it does happen, Jackson and the rest of the team could head back to New Zealand next summer for two months of additional shooting.

Talks of a possible trilogy started earlier this month during Comic-Con weekend, where the director had a panel for the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The idea of adding a third entry was still very much in the early stages, but the fact that Jackson gave such intricate details about the possibility of adding a third chapter to The Hobbit film franchise gave many the impression that this was no joke.

Earlier this month, director Peter Jackson made his way from Middle-Earth to San Diego for Comic-Con, where he debuted 13 1/2 minutes of footage from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (see our coverage: SDCC 2012: “˜The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ Panel and Photos).

Along with the film footage, Jackson also showed the 6,500 attendees at the convention’s massive Hall H a production video on the film’s final days. Now, that video has been released and you can watch it here below. Before the actual production footage begins, the video includes a little bit of what Jackson experienced going to Comic-Con and being on the panel.

Despite just being one book, The Hobbit is being extended to two films: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. This will allow director Peter Jackson to tell a more expansive and detailed story. But during the San Diego Comic-Con, reports of the film expanding to three films started to surface. This, of course, trickled down to everyone’s Twitter feed, and a variety of sources drilled Jackson during a press conference.

Jackson acknowledged that there were talks of turning The Hobbit into three films, but with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey being released this year, the film split would probably occur at The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

Director Peter Jackson revolutionized fantasy cinema with his epic adaptation of J. R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings trilogy, a monumental task, in spite of the author’s insistence that it could never be filmed. Given the phenomenal success with which Jackson pulled that off, how well would he tackle Tolkien’s earlier saga of Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit? San Diego Comic-Con Hall H fans found out earlier today with the panel for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Moderator Chris Hardwick(The Nerdist podcast) kicked off the Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures panel with a surprise, by pulling open curtains across the back of the hall to unveil projection screens double standard size, larger than I’d ever seen in Hall H history. Over these screens they displayed a collage of images from the film, which gave fans a hint to the epic scale of the panel to follow. Then, they screened a behind-the-scenes reel of footage documenting the exhaustive 266-day production shoot, including some of the amazing epic sets and characters of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

We are just mere days away from converging at the mecca of all things geek: the San Diego Comic-Con. And to tease some of the highly anticipated Hall H panels, Warner Brothers has released a few exclusive posters for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Pacific Rim. Now a big title that’s missing from this collection is Zack Snyder’s Superman film Man of Steel, so hopefully we will get to see that one days before the opening of the Con. Check these posters out below.

First poster (via Bloody-Disgusting) is that of Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pacific Rim. The film tells the story of giant robots versus giant monsters. We previously saw a tease of Idris Elba in a high-tech suit. But the poster puts an emphasis on the robots and shows just how large the mechanical beings are when compared to that of their human operators.