Peter Jackson spoke to Inside Movies recently and tried to put a brake on some of the stories doing the rounds.
When asked about the rumored delay to the start of shooting he pointed out that as the Hobbit was still waiting for the official green light from the studio no official start date had been set so it couldn’t be delayed.
PJ goes on to say that they have just handed in the second Hobbit script and are now in the process of working out a budget that fits with the studios targets and then they will be announcing a date for the start of shooting.
“I’d be pretty optimistic that we’ll be shooting before the end of the year. I would imagine October, November, we’d be shooting by. I’m not announcing it, though.”
When asked the obligatory “Who’s getting the role of Bilbo Baggins?” question again he tried to put to rest some of the rumors.
“We haven’t signed any actors up yet, because we couldn’t do that until they greenlight the movie. But I would imagine that if we get a green light within the next month or two, we would be hopefully making some casting announcements by, I guess, the middle of the year. We’ve done a little bit of auditioning, but we haven’t really done any meetings with actors or anything yet. We’ve just been totally committed to the scripts. Everything’s a little bit later than what people assume it is. I think people think we’ve been sort of doing secret casting.”
He also went on to say that he would love to get the same actors for any of the characters who are returning from The Lord of the Rings but points out none have been approached yet or if they have, no deals have been done.
It’s interesting to note that Sir Ian McKellen has changed his blog comments about the start of shooting The Hobbit 3 times now. It originally said shooting to start in May, was changed to July and now says “at a time to be announced.”
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