With the help of a group of Dwarves and New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Keys, the Green Dragon officially opened for business Thursday. Located on the Hobbiton Movie Set near small-town Matamata, New Zealand, visitors can now have some ale as part of their visiting to the fully immersive movie immersion.
Press from around the globe were on hand for a full day showcase of what the site has to offer as they dispersed from the World Premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in Wellington, New Zealand the previous day.
Keys cut the chains on the door as the Alexander family, who owns the sheep farm the set is built on, welcomed him and the new addition to the set tour with the help of the actors who played dwarves in the latest Middle-earth film. Dean O’Gorman, Aiden Turner, Adam Brown, James Nesbit, John Callen, Stephen Hunter, Jed Brophy, Mark Hadlow, William Kircher, Peter Hambleton and Graham McTavish were all on hand for photos at the door and media interviews around the Hobbiton setting. Royd Tolkien was also in attendance along with key figures from the farm and New Zealand tourism.
Visitors were then treated to New Zealand’s finest wines, tasty snacks and cheeses and of course, ale. Several of the dwarves wore matching rings and revealed that just as the original Fellowship of actors in the LOTR movies all were tattooed together, this group, including lead Martin Freeman all share these specially crafted rings.
Hadlow summed it up, calling the rings a symbol of the actor’s brotherhood.
Please enjoy a few pictures from the event and from the Red Carpet the previous day.
Note: Correspondent Larry D. Curtis is in New Zealand but is having computer failures. Expect much more content in the days to come.
Discussion board member Ataahua comes through for us again with a cool online feature from the New Zealand Herald where you can see just how much The Hobbit actors have been transformed for their roles by makeup and prosthetics. Just drag the slider across each photo to see the actor transform into the character. Check it out and have fun! Read More…
While visiting Wellington in New Zealand, Prince Charles – who is here for the Queen’s diamond jubilee tour - made a stop over at Weta Workshop, where he meet Sir Peter Jackson and Sir Richard Taylor, and Dori (Mark Hadlow), who makes a special request of the Prince. Watch below!
Prince Charles clearly enjoyed his time at Weta Workshop; it made an unusual part of his 64th birthday celebrations, which he also spent with 64 New Zealanders who shared the same birthday. You can read more about the Prince’s visit to Wellington here, here and here (if you look closely at that last article, you may notice some interesting concept art and some familiar faces on the wall behind Prince Charles and Peter Hambleton!) Thanks to all the Ringers who emailed us about this news!
If you missed them, here are 17 (count them!) fabulous character posters that provide yet another look at the principal characters. In addition to Bilbo, Gandalf and all the dwarves of the party, the posters include Galadriel and Gollum. Maybe that’s a hint of Galadriel’s importance in An Unexpected Journey. Or maybe it’s just indicative of Cate Blanchett’s star power. (more…)
Thanks to Ringer Mulubinba for alerting to two recent podcast interviews by abc.net.au. with Mark Hadlow, who plays dwarf Dori in the upcoming Hobbit movies. The first interview was on the blog, “Afternoons with Richard Stubbs” and the second was done by reporter Margaret Burin . In the interviews, a very charming Mark reveals some great details about his character, Dori the dwarf, and what it was like working with director Peter Jackson and actors such as Sir Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman and Cate Blanchett. Both are well worth a listen!Interview 1Interview 2.
Warner Bros. has revealed another great scroll-like Hobbit poster on their site. Similar to the movie poster revealed recently, the newest poster concentrates mainly on the dwarves, with a little Bilbo and Gandalf thrown in. This helps further establish personalities and, with this particular scroll, names for each of the dwarves, helping fans familiarize themselves with all thirteen prior to seeing the movie. Do you have a favorite already? More than one? Let us know: Barliman’s chat; Hobbit Movie Discussion; TORn facebook, TORn Twitter. Read more…
A new movie poster for “The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey just debuted on the official Hobbit Movie Facebook page. The new poster is all about dwarves, dwarves and more dwarves. In fact, they managed to get all thirteen of them in the poster. All of them are very much in character which is that much more encouraging that Peter Jackson and crew will be able to pull of the challenging accomplishment of distinguishing thirteen major characters (and then some) and make them unique and memorable for the audience. What do you think the poster says about each of the dwarves’ personalities? Join us in our chatroom, on our facebook page or on our Hobbit Movie discussion board and let us know!
USA Today has just debuted six new photos from The Hobbit. There’s a great one of The Unexpected Party, another of Thorin Oakenshield looking very “questy”, and one beautiful image of Gollum, but the real eye-opener is Sylevester McCoy’s Radagast the Brown. There’s just something about his eyes that’s extraordinary. You know what I mean when you go have a look! Thanks to Ringer Owain for the heads-up! Oh, and SPOILERS!
From the very brief accompanying article: “I’m not a huge fan of fantasy for fantasy’s sake,” Jackson says. “I like Tolkien’s work because of the language, the cultures he wrote about… they’re anchored in a very real historical mythology that he created.”
More Hobbit-y goodness for all! This time it’s superb portraits of the 13 members of the Company. I tell you, I am starting to get a feeling that James Nesbitt’s Bofur will be a bit of a scene stealer.
The only ones missing (at the moment) are Bilbo and Thorin Oakenshield.
The great news for fans is that there are no plot spoilers here (unless you count costumes). So dip right into the full gallery below!
Why should Apple users get all the fun? Here are all the new photos from the Hobbit application that was launched just today!
Lots of them are at Bag End, but a couple of surprises appear to come from much later in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. And a couple will definitely please the Hot Dwarves fans. Anyway, enough waffle, go check them out! Potential spoilers!
Rubbermonkey, an online audiovisual superstore and film production company based in Wellington, is currently auctioning a film clapperboard signed by the Hobbit crew to raise money for four local charities — the SPCA, SAFE, NICU, and Ronald McDonald House.
The IKAN clapperboard wasn’t used on the Hobbit, but has been signed by members of the Hobbit cast, including Martin Freeman and Ian McKellan.
The auction is running now on Trade Me, and closes on Monday September 10 at 3:51pm. (Some of you might also be interested in the twin charity auction of a filmclapper signed by the All Blacks.)
Peter Jackson and company swooped into Comic-Con and unleashed some footage for the ravenous fans there but now he has unleashed Vlog #8 from his Facebook page full of spoilers, Comic-Con footage, John Howe, lots of actors saying hi and a little nostalgia from the crew. If you can stand a view of stone giants, Beorn’s house, Andy Serkis jamming on a sax and an absurd amount of “Hobbit” stuff, it is a must watch. The film hasn’t been released yet and already producer Michael Pellerin and his crew of behind-the-scenes people are making us nostalgic for it! And, sure sounded like Jackson reads TheOneRing. Find it on his Facebook page or watch it below:
With the help of a group of Dwarves and New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Keys, the Green Dragon officially opened for business Thursday. Located on the Hobbiton Movie Set near small-town Matamata, New Zealand, visitors can now have some ale as part of their visiting to the fully immersive movie immersion.
