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The Hobbit Report: November 10, 2009
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Much of the editorial focus of JRR Tolkien Examiner will be on the upcoming, two-part film version of The Hobbit, to be released at Christmas 2011 and 2012. The Hobbit Report brings you the latest developments as the production progresses.
There is more news available regarding pre-production of The Hobbit, as both actor Ian McKellen and director Guillermo Del Toro have spoken publicly about the project's current status.
Sir Ian told Sci Fi Wire that the script for the two-part prequel film is finished; that he has read it; and that unlike in the script for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this time the part of Gandalf was written specifically with McKellen, and his previous performance, in mind.
As [producer] Peter [Jackson] has said, [the writers] loved writing Gandalf [for The Hobbit] because they knew who they were writing him for," McKellen told us exclusively in an interview last week while promoting AMC's The Prisoner. "There are a lot of characters in The Hobbit, including, crucially, Bilbo, and they don't know who's going to play Bilbo. So it's extremely attractive that this part has been written for me. The other Gandalf was written for, well, just as Gandalf. There's lots for me to enjoy, in all sorts of ways. And I couldn't be happier. But I'm sworn to secrecy. I'm not to say anything at all about the script." [links added]
Meanwhile, del Toro spoke to TotalFilm.com, giving a first look at how The Hobbit will be structured, and how it will differ from The Lord of the Rings.
The idea to structure the two films with one a Hobbit adaptation and the other as an invented story linking The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings has been completely abandoned. The films will split the story of the novel The Hobbit in two, with the events of the White Council's battle against the Necromancer, only alluded to in the book, fully fleshed out on-screen. Del Toro told the site:
We are respecting the structure established by Professor Tolkien because the order of the adventures in The Hobbit is well known to generations and generations of kids. You don’t want to be moving stuff like that.
The creature design will differ from the trilogy:
...I said we would keep the DNA in the same gene pool as the Rings trilogy, but that we would generate a different type of character. For example, in the trilogy most of the creatures are brutish or inarticulate. In The Hobbit, the creatures speak: Smaug has beautiful lines of dialogue; the Great Goblin has beautiful lines of dialogue; many creatures do...
I wanted the Wargs to have a certain beauty so that you don't have a massively clear definition: what is beautiful is good and what is ugly is not. Some of the monsters are absolutely gorgeous.
This implies that del Toro's Wargs (Tolkien's giant, talking wolves) will differ from Peter Jackson's in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which appeared as disfigured creatures.
Apart from that change, del Toro doesn't want to release any spoliers, although he promises that Smaug will be different than any dragon seen before.
...All I can say is that we have an incredibly good team of people who know we are not making another Rings. We are not trying to make a quadrilogy, or a pentilogy. We’re trying to make two films that flow with those but that stand on their own completely.
We want to avoid stuff that is not part of the DNA, that is not part of the lexicon, but we also don’t want people to feel “we’ve seen this." Except where that familiarity is comforting, like Hobbiton or Rivendell – then you want to feel like you’re coming back home to a movie that you love and cherish.
Recently actor John Rhys-Davies, who portrayed the Dwarf Gimli in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, indicated he would not be returning for The Hobbit.
UPDATE: Anonymous sources tell TheOneRing.net that while no contracts have been signed, the actors portraying Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield have been chosen.
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