This months special edition 20th anniversary copy of Empire magazine is on the stands today and features an interview with both Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro about plans, hopes and progress of The Hobbit movies.
The two reveal more about dropping the idea of the ‘bridging’ movie and their new idea of filming The Hobbit over two movies.
They tell Empire that the movies will not be just the journey of Bilbo and the dwarves however and they plan to expand the story to include both Sauron’s story as well as Gandalf’s comings and goings.
Jackson: We just decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie. The essential brief was to do The Hobbit and it allows us to make the Hobbit in a little more of the style, if you like, of the trilogy, too.
Del Toro: To make a movie of the Hobbit that didn’t go over three hours
Jackson: You would be rushing along…
Del Toro: You would be losing iconic moments. The animated version avoids Beorn, who is a great character, and some people always feel that you should lose the Spiders (of Mirkwood), or this or that. We wanted to keep every iconic moment that was in the book and give it some weight.
When asked how they are to handle the Dwarves Jackson says they plan to choose 5 or 6 to develop ‘interesting’ relationships with Bilbo and how they want to avoid simply having Thorin and 12 sidekicks.
Jackson is also at pains to point out that The Hobbit movies ARE going to be different to his Lord of the Rings trilogy in the article.
“What I think everybody has to get right in their minds is that we’re creating a Middle-earth that’s pretty much the same as the trilogy’s Middle-earth. Hobbiton is going to look like the same place. Hobbits are going to look the same. But it’s another guy going in with his own filmmaking style. That’s why I think this could be a better idea for him to direct these films than me. Let’s all see what somebody else does with Middle-earth. Let’s go in there with another director and another set of lenses and another cameraman, and see what they do with it. I think that’s exciting. He’s not pretending to be me. People have got to get that into their heads.”
Talk of filming The Hobbit in 3D is still ongoing because the worry is that shooting in 3D will distort the tonality set by the original trilogy.
Shooting of The Hobbit movies will begin in March 2010.
Order your copy of Empire by clicking here.
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