MIRAMAR, NEW ZEALAND — In the final few weeks of filming for “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” a handful of journalists visited Peter Jackson’s set at Stone Street Studios near Wellington, New Zealand to do a final round of interviews during filming.
The invitation included TheOneRing.net. The pack of journos were given a lot of interviews in a short amount of time with the agreement with Warner Bros. to hold them until just before the final film. The veil is lifted and here is the interview, with minimal commentary. (Assume the less good questions aren’t from TORn!)
We met in the mess hall, empty except for us on a windy day. Pace is even more handsome in person than expected, dressed casually but smartly and he gave very thoughtful answers — as you will read — and appeared to be thinking while he spoke. In fact, at the time the interview seemed extraordinary, especially as he talked about his character. Some of these phrases could be engraved and hung somewhere. Reading through it more than a year later, I hope fans enjoy it as much as I do.
We were fresh from Weta Workshop, Academy Award winner Richard Taylor as well as interviewing Academy Award winner Dan Hennah and having a tour of the offices of the Art Department where we saw concept art and models and props of all kinds.
Here is the conversation: Continue reading “TheOneRing.net and Lee Pace on set to talk ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies””
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Here’s the transcript of a long but very interesting roundtable question and answer session that Ian McKellen conducted with a number of reporters just before his final day on the set of the Hobbit as Gandalf.
The transcript traverses not just his role — and legacy — as Gandalf, but also his Shakespearean endeavours, living in New Zealand, meeting Edmund Hillary, and the challenges that Sean Connery might have faced if he’d ever taken on the Gandalf role.
Continue reading “Ian McKellen talks on Gandalf’s last day”
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Brisbane tabloid The Sunday Mail sent writer Neala Johsnon across the pond to New Zealand in June 2013 for a stint on the set of The Hobbit during pick-ups. This article finally popped up in the paper’s mag last weekend.
As The Sunday Mail — especially its longer, feature-style magazine articles — doesn’t really make its way online at all, here’s the article re-typed in full for TORn readers. Beware minor movie spoilers, there are a couple of new lines of movie dialogue below and more information about the situation in the ruins of Dale in the lead up to the final battle. Continue reading “Hobbit’s road comes to an end”
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Sir Ian McKellen starts this video introduction to announce the World Premiere date for the final chapter of Peter Jackson’s cinematic Middle-earth films. We now know for sure that the cast and crew from all six films will be walking through Leicester Square on December 1, 2014 in London. Sir Ian was joined by Richard Armitage, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom and Bilbo Baggins himself, Martin Freeman. Check out the video below for more details and start making your plans accordingly. There is mention of a contest, so good luck to anyone who chooses to enter.
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There are just 3 months remaining until the final chapter of The Hobbit saga and the final bit of Middle-earth on film is released, and new images and story tidbits are going to start coming much quicker now. Earlier today we shared the new scrolling poster for this final chapter and now we have some analysis of what can be seen in it from our staff. Of all the new imagery available, there is still nothing of Dain and the wild War Boar he purportedly rides in on, but this scroll does have a few other new tidbits of info in it that are fun to speculate on.
But first, a little editorial note about these scrolls that most of you have probably already noticed, there is a LOT of photoshop involved in putting these together. They cobble together a vast array of characters and settings in order to tell a miniature 2D story with just a few images, and sometimes the photoshop works well, and sometimes not so much. When it does not work out so well, we’ve taken to calling it FrankenPhotoshop, which can be attributed to any image that makes you scratch your head and wonder ‘wait, who is that?’.
So read on to see the TORn staff reactions to the images selected to be in this Scroll, and then feel free to post your own thoughts below. Continue reading “TORn staff analyze the new scroll poster for The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies”
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Well now you can.
Ringer Rohan Refugee sends us this report from TV3 New Zealand.
The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit fans are some of the most loyal and devoted of them all.
They have spent hundreds of millions seeing the movie and they come to New Zealand in their droves to see where their beloved films were made. Continue reading “Fancy owning Gandalf’s horse from The Desolation of Smaug?”
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