Peter Jackson defends splitting `The Hobbit` into three films

London: Filmmaker Peter Jackson says it was important for ‘The Hobbit’ to be split into three films.

The 51-year-old director has been criticised for expanding the `Hobbit` saga beyond two feature films, but Jackson said that the decision was inspired directly by author JRR Tolkien, reported a website. "A lot of the embellishment, almost all comes from Tolkien because he wrote a lot of notes for an expanded version that he was going to revise after `The Lord of the Rings`. There were elements looking back at `The Hobbit` that he wished he`d included," Jackson said. "So he did have a lot of notes for what he was going to revise but he never got that book done. Those notes were published after his death at the end of `Return of the King`, so we were able to access a lot of that. All of the expanding and embellishment was based on the ideas Tolkien was exploring," he added. Jackson also said that his primary goal with the `Hobbit` series was to please Tolkien`s most loyal fans. "I`m a JRR Tolkien fan and this is the Hobbit movie I`d love to see, but then you get to the point when you realise it`s not all about you. So you have to hand the movie over to the world and it`s great that people have responded the way they have," he said. ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ will hit theatres on December 13 in the UK, and December 14 in the US. PTI