The films will be made in New Zealand, the same as the Lord of the Rings movies. Some of the same locations will be used, including Hobbiton, which is already being planted with flowers and shrubs to make it look similar to The Shire in the Lord of the Rings movies. Scouting for other locations has begun, although specifics have yet to be announced, undoubtedly pending the green light.
Month: February 2011
Yes, both movies The Hobbit will be filmed at the same time. This will help maintain continuity for both films and ensure the actors are available for the entire filming process.
The release dates were originally publicized to be December 2011 and 2012 with filming set to start around March of 2010. However, delays due to finalizing the script, MGM’s financial woes, finding a new director after Guillermo Del Toro stepped down, and an actor’s union boycott, have pushed the release dates to 2012 and 2013. The films were officially ‘greenlit’ (given the go-ahead to start spending money on things like sets, locations and actors) on October 15, 2010 with filming set to begin in February, 2011.
Useful Links:
Hobbit ‘greenlight’ announcement
According to the Empire Online interview with PJ and GDT (link above), the two movies will include all of the iconic moments in the book, The Hobbit, as well as being expanded to follow other events that occur ‘offstage.’ This includes the White Council and Gandalf’s comings and goings to Dol Guldur. Pj: “We expanded out the universe a lot more so that we weren’t just staying with Bilbo and the Dwarves on their journey, as the book pretty much does. We started to expand some of what’s happening to Gandalf outside of that journey.” Things we know are included so far:
– backstory of Thrain, Thorin’s father
– Beorn
– Spiders
– The White Council
– Gandalf’s journeys to Dol Guldur
– The three trolls (Tom, Bert, William)
– Sauron ( including some of his history)
Useful Links:
Message board thread: What does a “sequel” mean?
GDT comment about the 2nd Film
(Also see Empire Magazine link in 1.1 above)
Wondering where TORn’s IRC has got to? Well, a hard drive failure on the hosting server has left TheOnering.net’s IRC network temporarily out of commission. No service till Monday US time at least (Tue in the much more awesome lands of the future). In the meantime, we (your dark powers who are the server ops — one @ to rule them all and all that) have established a refuge on the Surrealchat network.
Channel: #theonering.net
Network: irc.surrealchat.net
Port: 6667 or 6697
If you’re not familiar with the complexities of dedicated IRC chat clients, we recommend using a simple, intuitive browser-based system called Mibbit.
Beorn’s Ma writes: “Community” on NBC went geek on last night’s episode. The episode is centered on D&D with numerous nods to LoTR, including music, maps, and narration. The episode can be viewed on the NBC website: http://www.nbc.com/community/