Guillermo del Toro sits down with the One Ring
He’s hardly been officially signed for a week, yet Guillermo del Toro is as busy as a bee, setting things moving for the two new Lord of the Rings prequel films.
Over at The One Ring (.net), they have managed to score an interview with the director of the Hellboy movies, who has been appointed director of the LotR prequel movies, to be made from Tolkien’s other Middle Earth centric work, the Hobbit, and the LotR appendices.
Del Toro looks as though he is going to really blow this film out of the water as well. He has big plans for the second movie, which he sees as much more than just a bridging movie. “I’ve been hearing it called ‘a bridge film’, it’s not, it’s an integral chapter of the story,” he said.
“The Hobbit’, the book, is really one self-contained film, so for the second movie we sat down and worked it out. When we did this we got really excited because this second film is not a ‘tag on’, it’s not ‘filler’, it’s an integral part of telling the story of those 50 years of history lost in the narrative. There will be certain things that we will see from the first movie but from a different point of view, but it will feel like a volume, in the 5 volumes of the entire story.”
For fans of the Lord of the Rings DVD’s, you may remember the planting of the Shire, and the amount of work that went in to that. According to del Toro, that same Shire will be returning for his movies. “Just the reforestation of The Shire, re planting all those trees and plants will take months, and we’re going to be as exact as possible.”
As for who will be involved in del Toro’s films, it seems he is getting the old band back together. “…in the last few weeks I’ve been chatting with a ton of people via email, phone, and in person from the previous films. People like Andy Serkis, Sir Ian McKellen, Howard Shore, John Howe, Gino Acevedo, Richard Taylor next week I’m meeting Alan Lee.”
“Well, I had the most charming meeting with Sir Ian, and all bureaucracy pending, he’s on board, as is Andy Serkis. We will continue giving you progress reports as the occur. It is our intention that we will not lose any of the key elements.”
Just from this, ignoring all the other great work del Toro has done, I’m really excited about these films. Naturally, I’m not going to be able to wait, but I’ll have to make do with the information that is imparted here.