The events on The Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey occur less than seventy years before The Lord Of the Rings .
The film 's screenplay was written by Jackson , his longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens , and Guillermo del Toro , who was originally chosen to direct the film before leaving the project in 2010.The story is set in Middle-earth seventy-seven years before the main events of The Lord of the Rings , and portions of the film are adapted from the appendices to Tolkien 's The Return of the King .
The Hobbit-COLON- An Unexpected Journey