Saturday
24May2008
Jackson, del Toro Talk 'Hobbit'
Saturday, May 24, 2008 at 8:53PM
Even though the first of two
Hobbit films is
two-and-a-half years away, it's already and always newsworthy. This weekend,
Peter Jackson and
Guillermo del Toro teamed up to answer some burning questions
about the series. The online chat was hosted by
Weta, and according to them, the
tandem received a question every second for a solid hour, not to mention the
over 6,000 questions they received leading up to the event.
Jackson and del Toro covered casting, shooting
schedules, effects, and each other's roles in the process. Among the highlights:
Both Jackson, serving as an executive producer, and del Toro, the newly minted
director, agree that the films will most likely be - and should be - shot back
to back, "with a small break to breathe and to reconstruct certain sets and have
time to reassess," adds del Toro. "But a schedule of a year is expected."
"During our year of filming we will be shooting both
movies at the same time out of sequence," confirms Jackson, who says that that
method will allow the production crew to shoot scenes that use the same sets and
characters in both films to knock out those scenes concurrently to save time.".
There's big a big question about why the immensely
talented del Toro was Jackson's choice to succeed him in the land of Tolkien.
"He has respect for fantasy. He understands it, he's not frightened by it,"
Jackson declares. "Guillermo also understands character, and how the power of
any movie is almost always linked to how closely we empathize with characters
within the story. His work shows great care and love for the main characters he
creates."
Another big question has been the second film. If it's
not The Hobbit and it's not Lord of the Rings, what exactly is it? Jackson has
very specific thoughts on that:
"I'm really looking forward to developing Film Two. It gives us a freedom that we haven't really had on our Tolkien journey. Some of you may well say that's a good thing of course! The Hobbit is interesting in how Tolkien created a feeling of dangerous events unfolding, which preoccupy Gandalf. There's an awful lot of incident that happens during that 60 year gap. At this stage, we're not imagining a film that literally covers 60 years, like a bio-pic or documentary. We would figure out what happens during that 60 years, and choose one short section of time to drop in and dramatise for the screen. "As for what the second film - known as F2 during the online chat - would be called, del Toro jokes, " Too early- but not "H2 Electric Boogaloo" that has been discarded." Be sure to check out the entire chat transcript for more in-depth information about one of the most anticipated prequel series of all time.
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