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Originally Posted by Sir Kohran
I don't think they'll get rid of Beorn as he's an important character - he saves Thorin from instant death and almost single handedly turns the tide of the battle on the ground. Besides that, is any film director going to pass up a bearded shapeshifter who transforms into a giant fighting bear?
The problem with Bombadil was that he would have totally ruined the atmosphere. Think about it - we have the scared Hobbits fleeing through the night in the shadowy forests from the ghostly Ringwraiths, when suddenly...'Hey dol! Merry dol! Don't you crush my lillies!' The movie would have lost all credibility, I'm afraid.
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I expect that the film-makers will take a bit of the 'children's book'-character of the Hobbit away to make it more similar to the LotR in atmosphere. It would be less of a financial risk as that is what the general audience might expect the Hobbit to be.
In the LotR movies we have not heard of shape-shifters, so we need to spend more time for the introduction of Beorn than for those of other characters, because he will appear very weird otherwise (not to mention the animals that serve the companions). The same holds for Bombadil in a way - you'd have to invest a lot of time to make him look "realistic". Otherwise, as cool as Beorn might be, I fear many movie-goers might think "Huh? What is
that guy supposed to be? This is
soo not Middle-earth!"
And then the question arises: is it worth the effort? Would it be so disastrous to let the Eagles drop the travelling party immediately at Mirkwood? Is Beorn's appearance at the Battle really that important? Would we cut him in order to have more time to invest at the other stages of the story, to give more depth to other characters (for example certain characters that can fly and breathe fire and whom this story actually is about)?
The alternative would be to increase his role, like
morm suggested. Of course I'd favour this as well, but what if screen time is getting short?
And now you may throw the stones.