Peter Jackson has tackled a series of questions about his upcoming film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Digital Spy said.

The Oscar-winning director held a Hobbit live event over the weekend and has since released a clip where he answered a number of queries directly from fans.

Discussing his decision to split The Hobbit into three films, Jackson explained: "It is complicated to do a middle film [like The Desolation of Smaug]. The advantage is that we have multiple storylines.

"The first of the Hobbit movies is a fairly linear film - Gandalf leads the dwarves across Middle-earth at the beginning of this adventure. The great thing about the second movie - as it was with The Two Towers, actually - is that the story starts spreading into multiple storylines."

He continued: "We can follow different characters as the story intensifies and the stakes go up."

Jackson also addressed a complicated question from Stephen Colbert about the elves of Mirkwood, and one from Lord of the Rings star Billy Boyd about the terrain of Middle-earth.

The second Hobbit film features Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey and Orlando Bloom as Legolas.

Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug opens on December 13 in the US and the UK.