The Hobbit Begins Shooting In June

The Peter Jackson-produced, Guillermo del Toro-directed two-film adaptation of The Hobbit will begin shooting in June.

 

This according to actor Ian McKellen, who is returning as Gandalf. He wrote the following on his official website:

THE HOBBIT’s, two films, start shooting in New Zealand in June. Filming will take over a year. Casting in Los Angeles, New York City and London has started. The script too proceeds. The first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle Earth. The director Guillermo del Toro is now living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons’ and the studio in Miramar.

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Hugo Weaving Signed For The Hobbit – And Much More

One of BBC radio presenter Simon Mayo’s guests this week was Guillermo del Toro, and luckily for Guillermo, he came by on a Tuesday when Mayo’s oft-addled movie-reviewing sidekick Mark Kermode would be out of the way. While they were there to primarily discuss Del Toro’s vampire novel The Strain, Mayo did have a poke and probe into many of Guillermo’s upcoming movies, not least of all The Hobbit. After the break, details on his various cast confirmations, including Hugo Weaving as Elrond, and a good sackful of other del Toro updates, including details on why Hellboy 3 will very possibly not happen, the casting and make-up tests for Frankenstein, a potential TV version of The Strain and more.

Let’s deal with The Hobbit first because, hey, Guillermo has to. When Mayo asked about the proposed ‘bridge film’, Guillermo explained that now the plan was to make just two films, between them adapting the novel and factoring in some subplot material:

There is a whole other chapter, so to speak, which is the comings and going of Gandalf which are dealt with, people that know the lore know that Gandalf was delayed with a crisis… with a character that is very shady called the Necromancer that proves to be Sauron.

Mayo then asked if Andy Serkis is back, which prompted Guillermo to confirm a nice little trio of casting locks:

Yes [and] Ian McKellen is back, [and] Hugo Weaving in the roles they originated in the trilogy.

On the matter of Smaug, Guillermo explained that only now, after eight months of design work have they just “cracked the basic engineering.” He suspects that they will need another six or seven months of application there before Smaug is ready for his close up.

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