It ought to be noted that Tolkien's abortive 1960 revision was not intended to produce a 'darker' Hobbit. It was intended to make the book as consistent as possible with all that is said in LotR. The issue that Tolkien spilt the most ink on in connection with this revision was - not the tra-la-laling Elves, not the White Council and the Necromancer - but the phases of the moon. I doubt that this will be the foremost issue in the screenwriters' minds. In any case, Tolkien didn't know, and wouldn't have cared, that so-called 'dark' things would become cool.
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