I wonder if Pete Jackson will have a cameo.

Yeah - when would a small monster appear? Can't think of anything that small in that book - Trolls, Wargs and dragons?? Not small. Goblin perhaps?

Well, the goblin caves in which gollum lived would probably have plenty of small goblinoids. I know it's been ages since I actually read The Hobbit, but I think the tunnels where he lived were inhabited by goblins and not orcs. In LotR they've already established the size range of orcs with some looking more like I would have imagined goblins. So who knows?

Also, the decision to spread the Hobbit movie over the course of two movies seems to indicate, to me, that they're going to probably vear away from the known Hobbit film and provide background filler, letting us know what's going in other areas of Middle Earth. While we're watching Bilbo and the dwarves trying to escape from the Elven stronghold, we might also see Gandalf, Saruman and the rest of the council pushing Sauron out of Mirkwood. So going in this direction, we might see more characters/situations than we are expecting and a "small creature" might have made an appearance in some other area.

man we sure miss the places where we started.