Earlier this week, we brought you the news about Evangeline Lilly (Lost, Real Steel) being cast as a new character-the Woodland Elf, Tauriel and Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage) being cast as the Goblin King in director Peter Jackson‘s forthcoming Lord of the Rings prequels, The Hobbit.
Now, Entertainment Weekly has published the first official images from the set of the film. Check them out below, along with quotes from director Peter Jackson.
MARTIN FREEMAN (BILBO BAGGINS)
”He fits the ears, and he’s got some very nice feet,” Jackson says of his Bilbo. ”I think he’s got the biggest hobbit feet we’ve had so far. They’re a little bit hard to walk in, but he’s managed to figure out the perfect hobbit gait.”
PETER JACKSON WITH MARTIN FREEMAN
”There’s no way you can pace yourself for shoots like these,” Jackson says. ”When we were going through the schedule for The Hobbit, I felt a terrible drop in my stomach when I saw that we’d be shooting for 254 days. We’re only 12 days short of The Lord of the Rings even though we’re only doing two movies. When I saw that, I had to sort of pick myself up off the floor and carry on.”
IAN MCKELLEN (GANDALF)
”He’s in fantastic form,” Peter Jackson says of McKellen. ”In a way, his role in The Hobbit has more technical difficulties than Lord of the Rings did, because he has scenes with 14 smaller characters — obviously the dwarves and the hobbit are shorter… I remember saying to him [laughs], ”Look, this isn’t Waiting for Godot or King Lear. This is The Hobbit. This is the real thing.”
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is slated to hit theaters on December 14, 2012.
The Hobbit: There and Back Again is slated to hit theaters on December 13, 2013.
The films star Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchette, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Sylvester McCoy, Aidan Turner , Graham McTavish, John Callen, Ken Stott, Mikael Persbrandt, Ryan Gage, Jed Brophy, William Kircher, Stephen Hunter, Ian Holm, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Conan Stevens, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Barry Humphries and Benedict Cumberbatch.
