New 'Hobbit' Poster Crams In Thirteen Dwarves And A Pastry Platter

With the last teaser poster for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the Warner Bros. marketing team quite consciously called back to Peter Jackson's earlier Lord of the Rings trilogy. The portrait of a sword-wielding Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) was of a piece with the posters for Fellowship of the Rings and Return of the King, which showed Frodo and Aragorn, respectively, in similar poses.

But as striking as it was, it left out a many of the key players in the movie — namely, the merry band of dwarves. The new poster remedies that by cramming all thirteen dwarves onto the page at once, along with a plate of cupcakes for them to snack on. Check it out after the jump.

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At least, I think those are cupcakes that Bombur (Stephen Hunter) is holding. Feel free to yell at me in the comments if those are actually some other very specific Middle Earth delicacy I failed to identify.

The rest of the characters seen here are, in no particular order, Bofur (James Nesbitt), Bifur (William Kircher), Nori (Jed Brophy), Dori (Mark Hadlow), Ori (Adam Brown), Fili (Dean O'Gorman), Kili (Aidan Turner), Gloin (Peter Hambleton), Oin (John Callen), Balin (Ken Stott), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), and Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage).

The new poster makes for a perfect counterpart to the last one. Where the Bilbo-centric image helped tie The Hobbit trilogy into the Lord of the Ring series, this dwarf-heavy one sets up The Hobbit as its own tale. Although both series are set in the same universe (albeit decades apart), The Hobbit takes a lighter approach to J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy land, and that playful tone really comes through here.

The first chapter of the Hobbit saga, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, opens December 14, with The Desolation of Smaug due out in 2013 and There and Back Again in 2014.

The three films tell a continuous story set in Middle-earth 60 years before "The Lord of the Rings," which Jackson and his filmmaking team brought to the big screen in the blockbuster trilogy that culminated with the Oscar®-winning "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

The adventure follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakenshield. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Sorcerers.

Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain, first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever...Gollum.

Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of ingenuity and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum's "precious" ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities... A simple, gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.