Richard Armitage, who played Thorin Oakenshield in ‘The Hobbit’ trilogy, says the Extended Edition of ‘The Battle Of Five Armies’ could get an IMAX release.

He told Yahoo Movies UK that the powers that be were considering this to showcase an action-packed chariot scene that was cut from the original theatrical version.

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He said: “There’s also a great chariot race that’s in the middle of ‘Five Armies’ which got cut. They spent a lot of time and money building a chariot and the computer graphics in that sequence are really special. I think Balin is driving the chariot and Dwalin is on the back firing off weapons, and Kili and Fili are hanging off the side of it. I think that whole sequence is a three and half-minute chase so there’s quite a lot of footage.

“I also heard a rumour that they might do a release of the extended edition in cinemas so people could see it [the chariot scene] in IMAX, so lets keep our fingers crossed that that might happen. That would be cool wouldn’t it?”

This has not been confirmed by the studio, but if the scene is anywhere near as exciting as Armitage claims then we’d certainly love to see it on the big screen.

During our interview with Armitage, he also mentioned another big scene that didn’t make the cut.

“We’re going to see a big funeral scene at the end with some pretty emotional speeches by Gandalf. That’s something I’m looking forward to. I know that when the decision was made to take that out of the final movie was made there was a little scene added where you see the dwarves on the waterfall and they kneel around the dead body. That was an addition because the funeral was cut. I imagine in the extended edition they’ll both be in.”

He said the scene was axed because it was “repeating themes”.

“There were a lot of characters who had to finish of their stories, for example the Tauriel/Thranduil storyline had to finish. Playing a funeral scene on top of that is just overloading the end of the movie so to be honest I wasn’t disappointed that it got cut. The end of the film felt right without it.

“[But] I was sad about the chariot and I know Graham McTavish [Dwalin] was very disappointed that it wasn’t in there. It’s so exciting and thrilling to watch but there just wasn’t time for it.”

‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray.



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