Jackson is adding a ton of stuff from the Appendices to The Hobbit films, like Dol Guldur, Sauron's backstory, and the stuff that happened after The Hobbit but before LOTR. So I don't see why you find it weird.
Um...the Hobbit was a straightforward book about a hobbit helping dwarfs reclaim their home and treasure from a dragon. I don't know how that is so complicated and weird for you because it was all about Bilbo, and not 20 twenty lotr characters.
Umm no offense, but isn't this for political cartoons? This isn't about politics at all! I'm not trying to post links spam or hate but honestly this seems like it might be better in SYAC than Soapbox Derpy. Unless this is just for news and not solely politics.
The appendices are being used in Hobbit though, so you can't really count those pages in LotR's favor. LotR itself was always originally intended as one novel with one volume, it was simply that book binding technology was not as great back in the day, so Tolkien settled with splitting the 6 books among three volumes. Jackson has also added a few more characters to flesh out the setting a bit, but hopefully he didn't take anything away.
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The grinch who stole christmas was 12 pages long and they made several 2-hour animated and live action films, plus a musical of it.