The Hobbit has names

This may be old news to some people but I was away when this story was broken on Empire Magazine's website.

Finally the Peter Jackson epic in waiting has now got official names. The first installment of this will be called:
'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:' This will hit cinemas on December 14th 2012 and the second installment will be called:
'The Hobbit: There and Back Again'. This will hit screens on December 13th 2013.

Also, here is a list of the cast that have been confirmed to be in the film:

Martin Freeman, Orlando Bloom, Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Richard Armitage, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Graham McTavish, Mike Mizrahi, James Nesbitt, Dean O'Gorman, Lee Pace, Mikael Persbrandt, Conan Stevens, Ken Stott, Jeffrey Thomas and Aidan Turner.

And if anyone of you have joined up to Peter Jackson's Facebook page you'll already know by now that on it he has given rise to the spoiler that the White Council which was in the books being being likely to feature in the films. In case you haven't read the books here is a breakdown of what the Council was:

the Council was made up of various Elves, Wizards and others who met to maintain the peace and deal with problems through the years in Middle-earth, often focusing on the rising threat from Sauron. Elrond (Weaving), Gandalf (McKellen) and Galadriel (Blanchett) all served at one point. The Council was also involved in driving the Necromancer (actually Sauron) out of his former stronghold in Dol Guldur, forcing him back to Mordor.