In an interview today with MTV, Peter Jackson revealed that three Lord of the Rings actors will be returning to reprise their roles in The Hobbit:

“Gandalf, being a 2,000-year-old wizard, is still around and plays a major role in ‘The Hobbit,’ and we’re having Ian McKellen reprise,” explained the filmmaker, who is executive-producing the flick and writing the screenplay. “There’s a couple of other characters: Elrond, who was played by Hugo Weaving [in the original films], and there’s a possibility of Galadriel, who was played by Cate Blanchett.”

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Sir Ian Mckellen and Kevin Spacey have been honoured for their contribution to the arts at a glitzy ceremony in London. The Lord of the Rings star walked away with a trophy for his hard work in showbusiness at the annual Variety Club Awards on Sunday. Spacey, who serves as artistic director for London’s Old Vic theatre, was presented with the theatre award. More..

NEW YORK – A man named Michael from New York wakes up in the desert, much to his surprise. Fortunately, a pleasant-looking village is nearby. Unfortunately, Michael wants to get back to New York and finds he can’t. “That’s not possible,” the Village elder tells him. “There is no New York. There’s only the Village.” “I want out!” Michael says. “There is no out,” insists the leader. “There is only in.” More..

Graphic representations of how movie stars and their critics rate, according to Metacritic.com. Metacritic.com is an acclaimed Web site that combines thousands of media reviews of entertainment offerings — movies, games, books and albums — into a Metascore, a sort of weighted average of critics’ reviews that ranges from zero to 100. Analysis of just a small subset of the site’s information shows the power of numbers to confirm — or defy — expectation. More..

On the star list: Elijah Wood (#1), Viggo Mortensen (#3), Ian Holm (#4), Ian McKellen (#31), Cate Blanchett (#38)

AMC is doing their promo blitz for the updated version of ‘The Prisoner’, one of the cool items they sent along was this ‘Prisoner Timeline’ piece. Take a look! And don’t forget to catch ‘The Prisoner’ Sunday, November 15 at 8pm/7c on AMC.

When Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner aired in 1967, it was unlike anything else on TV. The brazenly surreal series became known for heady socio-political themes, outrageous sci-fi twists, willful absurdity, and head-scratching loose ends. Read the rest of this entry »

Ian McKellen is going back to drama school, for television. The thesp has signed to star in a half-hour mockumentary series, “The Academy,” that is being shopped to U.K. and U.S. buyers by DLT Entertainment. McKellen would play his fictional brother, Murray McKellen, who heads a run-down drama school, the Clapham Academy of Creative Arts, that is hoping to secure new funding through a docu on the school. More..

From www.mirror.co.uk (who tend to exaggerate every fact): Lord of the Rings star Sir Ian McKellen was upset on live TV after he was confused with another movie wizard. The actor – who played Gandalf in the hit films – was on US TV’s The View when host Whoopi Goldberg asked: “Are you coming back in Harry Potter.” Sir Ian, 70, looked clearly annoyed as he closed his eyes and paused. He said: “I don’t play Dumbledore – I play Lord of the Rings.” Embarrassed Whoopi apologised before Sir Ian assured her it was a common mistake.

What exactly is going on with the two-part adaptation of The Hobbit? The world seems to be holding its breath in anticipation, including us, but as the calendar turned to November, we turned to a trusted rock-solid inside source and found a dragon’s treasure of updates. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to message board member Theodred for alerting us to this story from scifiwire.com: Ian McKellen, whom we expect will put on Gandalf’s gray robes in director Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Hobbit movies, tells us he’s finally read the script for the films. And, no, he won’t tell us much about it, except that producer Peter Jackson (who co-wrote the script with longtime Lord of the Rings collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, as well as del Toro) wrote it specifically for him.

“As Peter has said, they loved writing Gandalf [for The Hobbit] because they knew who they were writing him for,” McKellen told us exclusively in an interview last week while promoting AMC’s The Prisoner. “There are a lot of characters in The Hobbit, including, crucially, Bilbo, and they don’t know who’s going to play Bilbo. So it’s extremely attractive that this part has been written for me. The other Gandalf was written for, well, just as Gandalf. There’s lots for me to enjoy, in all sorts of ways. And I couldn’t be happier. But I’m sworn to secrecy. I’m not to say anything at all about the script.” More..

Shannon writes: Thanks to your reporting I found out about Sir Ian attending the Shakespeare Gala in DC. It was several days after my twenty-first birthday, so I approached my parents asking them if we could make the trek there from New York as my present, and much to my surprise, they agreed. They are well aware of my goal to meet the entire Fellowship and have helped me meet five so far, so it seemed like a great idea to them to help me meet such an awesome number six for my birthday. Read the rest of this entry »