Hobbit Movie Casting Starts This Week

Casting for The Hobbit movie is (finally) set to begin this week in both London and LA and Peter Jackson says they are throwing a large net and casting for every role apart from the one of Gandalf which of course is spoken for.

“What we’ve done over the years is discover a lot of interesting actors, like Orlando Bloom (in ‘Rings’), Kate Winslet (in ‘Heavenly Creatures’), Saoirse Ronan (in ‘The Lovely Bones’). So if you start looking and auditioning seriously, it’s amazing what incredible talent you’ll find out there.”

When asked about the rumors of James McAvoy being chased for the part of Bilbo Baggins he said they had not settled on any actors.

“Apart from Ian McKellen, who we obviously want to return as Gandalf, we are not really offering any roles to anybody until we’ve done a casting sweep,” Jackson said.

He also went on to say he felt no pressure to cast stars in for any of the main characters in The Hobbit explaining he sees Tolkien as the real star.

“(These movies) have never been a star-driven vehicle. The star is (author J.R.R.) Tolkien and the world he created. We are not under any pressure. We want to find the right people. Casting someone to portray a hobbit is not as easy as you might imagine. They have to have a particular type of physical appearance and a sensibility. And the same with an elf or a dwarf. These are fantastical characters, but you’ve got to find the right people to play them, the right humans to translate these characters.”

Regarding the rumors of delays you may have come across doing the rounds last week he was keen to point out that as far as he is concerned everything is on schedule.

The writers (himself, Fran Walsh and Guillermo Del Toro) expect to have handed in the first Hobbit movie script and expect to have the second movie script in the hands of Warner Bros. around Christmas time.

“As long as we start shooting next year we will be fine.”

So there we have it, The Hobbit is finally getting down to the sharp. Expect lots of rumors as well as announcements over the coming weeks.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

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Tagged as: hobbit, hobbit casting, peter jackson