TNT Picks Up ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug’ TV Rights

FX has been picking up virtually every tentpole movie over the past couple of years. But The Lord Of The Rings franchise has been a TNT property, and the network just added the latest title, The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, which finished No. 1 in the domestic boxoffice this weekend and has brought in $127.5 million domestically and $403.8 million worldwide in 10 days of release. Turner’s ties with Warner Bros., which is behind the J.R.R. Tolkien movie adaptations, help it secure the Lord Of the Rings trilogy, with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring premiering on TNT in 2004. The network followed with the premieres of The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers in 2005 and Best Picture Oscar winner The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King in 2006. The first film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, makes its debut on TNT in 2015. It will be followed by The Desolation Of Smaug in 2016. “TNT has been the primary television home to Tolkien’s Middle Earth for nearly a decade,” said TNT president Michael Wright. “We’re proud to continue our association with these extraordinary and enormously popular epics with the acquisition of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug.”