A Hot Elf?! Evangeline Lilly the Latest Star to Join Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit'

Looks like director Peter Jackson was a fan of Lost tough girl, Kate Austen too, so much that he's reportedly created an elf character just for her in film adaptation of J.R.R Tolkein's The Hobbit.  Jackson relayed the news himself via his own Facebook page (The One Ring) last night that he's cast Evageline Lilly as a woodland elf named Tauriel, a new character created specifically for the film.

Jackson says the name Tauriel even comes with a translation, meaning "daughter of Mirkwood".  So there's a little backstory on where Lilly's character lives in the world of Jackson/Tolkein.

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Ian McKellen: "My Time Is Running Out" for 'Hobbit'

More nonsense from The Hobbit. It's already taken so long to get the film going that director Guillermo del Toro has backed out. It looks for all the world that Peter Jackson is just an official announcement away from being the only director of record for Middle Earth, and maybe that's fitting.

But now the double production may lose another of its key figures. Gandalf - and the film's biggest cheerleader - Sir Ian McKellen says he may not be able to fit the movie into his schedule, so protracted are the delays. That, of course, would be a huge shot to the already damaged project. Sir Ian told New Zealand's Good Morning (by way of Bleeding Cool), "Well I’m not under contract and my time is running out and I’m enjoying working in the theatre and frankly, I would like to race after doing Waiting For Godot, get on with doing another play but we’ll have to see," he said. "I don’t give the producers the impression that I’m sitting waiting."

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'The Hobbit' Now Slated for December 2012

I hate to say I told you so, but it looks like The Hobbit will be pushed back to December 2012. It's been vacillating between December dates in 2011 and 2012 for a while, and The Hollywood Reporter says it's the more distant of the two.

However, the trade also says there are no delays, but that's just not true, as we'll outline below. In the meantime, here's what you need to know: Both Hobbit films will hit IMAX, and that's actually how the release dates became public. The first movie is December 2012, with the follow-up arriving 12 months later. Oh, and it's tentatively being heralded as a 3-D film, at least in IMAX. But by that time, there will be so many damn digital screens that it will be hard to avoid making that move. So how do we know it's actually delayed? Well, for starters, the money's not there. And there won't be enough to make these movies until MGM is sold. That goes back several months, when the studio - which is co-producing with Warner Bros. - pleaded with its creditors to skip interest payments on $3.7 billion of debt so pre-production on The Hobbit could begin. At the time, that plan was approved, but soon after, the creditors started taking bids on MGM, and everything kind of stalled, including James Bond.

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Box Office - 'Shutter Island' is Scorcese's Best Debut

Coming off bigger than initially reported Friday receipts, Shutter Island cruised to an easy box office win this weekend, more than doubling its next closest competition. The $40 million three-day frame is by far the best in Martin Scorsese's career, and it marks a new record for Leonardo DiCaprio, as well.

The thriller might have a good 14-day run before Alice in Wonderland arrives; I'm not sure of the box office potential for either Cop Out or The Crazies, especially if Shutter Island hovers around 50% returns next weekend. That could be an interesting race. However, between this past Friday and next Friday, the film will be over $50 million in its first week, a great beginning for a movie shelved for nearly half a year. Big drops for Valentine's Day, Percy Jackson, and The Wolfman, which included a surprising 70% freefall for Valentine's Day. How a movie can start with $66 million in four days and look like it won't make it to $130 million just a week later is beyond me. I guess it served its limited purpose for the holiday weekend, but we're looking at a movie that made $23 million a week ago today that will need about two more full weeks to make that much again.

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Box Office - Happy 'Valentine's Day'

Even before we factor in Monday's box office numbers - which should still be quite good for a movie engineered specifically for this four-day period - Valentine's Day has had a major impact on the box office. There's a slim chance the rom-com could hit $65 million between Friday and Monday, based on the latest estimates that put the film well ahead of the pack at $52 million through Sunday.

Looking at the daily estimates, you might be surprised to learn that Valentine's Day is peaking on Sunday. Most movies don't do that, especially films that start as strong as this one did, plus, movies aren't - shall we say - the most romantic option for Valentine's Day. I thought this would make most of its money leading into Sunday with some carryover on Monday for people who made other other plans today. We'll keep an eye on that daily total when the actual numbers roll in. It will be a record weekend, too, thanks to the strong openings by Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Wolfman, which have been neck-and-neck ever since their opening days. Right now, Percy has about a half-million-dollar lead in the estimates, and both should finish the four-day weekend on the high end between $35 and $40 million.

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