Del Toro Gives a Hobbit Update

Following a slew of bad news, director Guillermo del Toro decided to give the cats over at OneRing.net an update regarding his progression on The Hobbit, upon which many are waiting with baited breath. He addressed rumors that only 3 actors were returning from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Line’s denial of greenlight to the production thus far, and trouble brewing at Warner Brothers.

A) About ONLY 3 actors returning: I think the emphasis on “only” is what slant the news the wrong way. I cannot imagine Gollum being played by anyone but Andy [Serkis] and in the second script there is still much in discussion to lock everything for now. Both PJ and I chime in on things “as they are at the moment” and, of course, things change…

B) The target for production. Its simple: we may say what we want but until there are two scripts delivered and budgets and schedules to support them we will be all under a yellow light of development. THAT we have not stopped. As I have reported in the past, we are scouting, designing (my last 3 hour meeting with Weta was this morning) and will not stop. BUT the greenlight and thus commencement can only be granted by the studio. Pete as producer and me as director will do everything we can in the meantime.

C) Is there any trouble brewing with WB? Not at all. All I can say is that they reacted to our delivered script with great delight and we have been receiving strong support in our development.

Following all the rumor-killing, del Toro continued to talk about the state of the production thus far.

Smaug is being animation tested, we are editing the previs, doing final selections on Dwarven War Artifacts and Gear and starting many fabrication tests for armies, prosthetics and wardrobes, etc

With as many updates as del Toro has been giving as far as The Hobbit, he gives the impression that he’s pretty adamant about getting this show on the road. Surely I’m not the only one that thinks  holding up production is foolish on this movie that’s just going to print money.

Source: FirstShowing.net