I disagree. While Peter Jackson should have included only relevant background material in the Hobbit, it should be as long as it needs to be.
In the Hobbit’s case, three movies might have been too much, but it certainly would have needed two movies to tell the whole story.
Sure, but you don’t need 6 hours of film to do the Hobbit, that’s just indulgent. Or maybe they are trying to conform to the “trilogy” format, since Hollywood doesn’t know how to do anything other than copy things that were previously successful.