It may be another eight months before Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" hits theaters, but one group of lucky fans will get a glimpse at the goods by tomorrow.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Brothers will treat attendees at Las Vegas theater owners conference CinemaCon to a 10-minute preview of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" tomorrow.
The highly anticipated "Lord of the Rings" prequel has a few tricks up its sleeve, including being shot in 3-D and playing at twice the standard speed for a film.
While most movies are made at the standard frame rate of 24 per second, "The Hobbit" will be the first major studio release filmed at 48 FPS. Many industry insiders, including Jackson and James Cameron, believe this quicker filming speed will decrease the appearance of motion artifacts, visual glitches caused by a disparity between the motion of an object and the frame rate of the camera filming it, like the warped appearance of electronic devices including televisions and computers commonly seen in news reporting.
While the implementation of this new frame rate may improve the aesthetic quality of a film, it comes at a cost; while nearly 4,000 North American theaters currently have projectors capable of showing films shot at 48 FPS, another 13,000 Sony projectors are expected to support the faster film speed by the time the movie is released.
The first installment of "The Hobbit" hits theaters on Dec. 14.
