MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
The Fabulous Journey of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbit is a Soviet television play for children directed by Vladimir Latyshev for Leningrad Television. Filmed in 1984, it was broadcast in 1985 in the program Skazka za skazkoy (Tale after Tale) and runs 71 minutes.
Zinovy Gerdt plays the professor who tells the story, a stand-in for Tolkien, with Mikhail Danilov as Bilbo, Ivan Krasko as Gandalf and Anatoly Ravikovich as Thorin. The play keeps the heart of the adventure, from the goblins and Gollum to the spiders and Smaug, but leaves out the trolls, Rivendell, Beorn and the Wood-elves. Smaug and the spiders are puppets, and the goblins are played by dancers of the Leningrad opera and ballet theatre.
Long forgotten, it was put online by Channel 5 in 2014 and has since found a new audience.
A professor tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit who left home with Gandalf and thirteen dwarves to face the dragon Smaug.
