The Hobbit 3 won't lead into The Lord of the Rings

One of the many rumours that persisted during the troubled pre-production for ‘The Hobbit’ was that the final film would serve as a "bridging" film between ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’.

[Benedict Cumberbatch scolds journo for asking "silly questions"]
 
However screenwriter Philippa Boyens, who has worked on all six Middle-earth films with Peter Jackson, says that is no longer the case.

 
"The film ends when the book ends, it does absolutely," the writer explained to Yahoo Movies UK while promoting 'The Desolation of Smaug'.

"Coming home… with his silver spoons. It does end there. It’s quite poignant, it is there… and back again. It’s not a bridge, it doesn’t span the 60 years between the two. I think someone else will have to make that movie, but it’ll be a good film to make!"

[Is this the ring that inspired Tolkien?]
 
She also offered her thoughts on the possibility of future interpretations of Tolkien's source materials, saying a small screen version would be great, "I think it would work as a television series, which is probably a sacrilegious thing to say, but I think that would be interesting, because it is quite episodic and there’s a lot of story in there that hasn’t been told."
 
"I think film isn’t a static thing either, so who knows what the future of film is going to be like. It sounds weird, and we probably think we don’t want it to happen, but it could be a completely immersive experience, holographic… it’s not going to stay static, that’s for certain, and I think that’s a good thing."

There's a 60 year time gap in the story between the end of Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' and the first 'LOTR' film and original director Guillermo Del Toro said that he wanted to "reconcile the facts of the first [LOTR] movie with a slightly different point of view - you would be able to see events that were not witnessed in the first."

But it sounds like this approach, along with much of Del Toro's work into the project, has been scrapped.
 
'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug' is in cinemas worldwide from December 13th, and you can watch the Sesame Street's tribute below...