Boyens says neither she nor Jackson or Walsh considered trimming the number of dwarfs, having Bilbo kill Smaug and shifting the dragon's death. "There are certain things that are sacrosanct and those dwarfs are one of them. And in the end it was a relatively easy solve. It's in the storytelling. I sort of had this eureka moment one day when I realised that it's not about it being too many dwarfs but about there being too few. Once you shape the story and you understand that there's only 13 of them and they are going to try to take back a mountain from a dragon you're off."