Hugo Weaving Confirmed for ‘Hobbit’

Published by Jeff Leins on: June 11th, 2009

Guillermo Del Toro was on BBC Radio on Tuesday discussing his latest projects with host Simon Mayo.  The director, producer, and now novelist Del Toro talked about the release of his vampire book The Strain (which he co-authored), his new adaptation of Frankenstein, a third Hellboy, and of course The Hobbit.  In case you’re interested, you can listen to the whole broadcast here.

He said he won’t be directing any sort of “bridge film” between the happenings in the Hobbit and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Instead, the plan is to chop the book in half for the two scheduled movies in December 2011 and December 2012.  To fill some of the time, he’ll be including “subplots” that involve more Gandalf, who he confirms will be played by Sir Ian McKellen.

“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.”

Del Toro also confirms Hugo Weaving will reprise his role as Elrond the elf, Lord of Rivendell.  Andy Serkis (Gollum) will also return.  Last year, Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) had been offered a part, but no word on the validity of those rumors now that the bridge film has been destroyed.  Not exactly shocking confirmations for those keeping up, but still good news nonetheless.  Oh, and still no word on who is playing Bilbo.

As for future Hellboy movies, Del Toro “guesses” it will never happen because Ron Perlman doesn’t want to wear the prosthetics anymore.  The filmmaker did, however, say he cast Doug Jones (who played the aquatic hero Abe Sapien) as the creature in the new Frankenstein movie.  Make-up tests for that will take place within the next few weeks.  He didn’t say when he plans to fit it into his busy schedule.