Message board member geordie alerted us to this unique item to be auctioned by Bonhams on December 15, 2011 in Los Angeles. It’s a copy of “The Lord of the Rings” signed by various members of the cast and crew of the movies including Peter Jackson, Ian McKellan, Cate Blanchett, Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Sala Baker, Liv Tyler and other principle actors and crew. Online bidding is welcome, so have a look.  More..

Elijah Wood has good reason to praise 3D, seeing as his old pal Peter Jackson has taken the stereoscopic route in his The Hobbit films. On the publicity circuit for Happy Feet Two, we asked Wood what he’d make of the mooted 3D conversion for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

“I think it would be cool to see. There’s talk of releasing a dimensionalised trilogy eventually. I’m okay with doing post-process 3D, as long as someone takes the time.

He also had this to say about the oft-mentioned future release of the LOTR films to home audiences:

I think there will be a DVD edition in which there are deleted scenes. There are deleted scenes, I don’t know how many there are, it’s been a long time. A lot made it back into the cuts for those extended versions, but there are some scenes that never made it. There are also hours… there has to be at least a couple of hours of blooper reel stuff, because we were having a blast.

You can read the entire article at Den of Geek.

Stephen Colbert is an unabashed popular-culture geek and frequently drops his Middle-earth knowledge and displays various swords, rings and LOTR stuff on his show The Colbert Report. So when he had Elijah Wood on to chat about Happy Feet 2 he “unexpectedly” dropped into a conversation about the currently filming Hobbit movies and made it clear that he has visited the set and been privy to secrets and then “duels” with Wood. Is he steeped enough in Tolkien pop-culture to someday drop a TORn reference? We wish he would but in the meantime, enjoy the clip! Thanks to spy Esme, the first of many to drop that little gem to us at Spymaster@theonering.net.

It’s hard to imagine any movies making as much box-office bank as Peter Jackson’s blockbuster The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The three films grossed almost $3 billion worldwide!

But now that production is well underway on Jackson’s upcoming Rings prequels, does series star Elijah Wood think The Hobbit films have what it takes to outshine LOTR’s moneymaking glory?

“I don’t even know if they’re meaning to outdo them,” Wood told us at Sunday’s Happy Feet Two premiere in Hollywood of the upcoming two Hobbit flicks. “They’re gonna be big. The audience is huge. The anticipation for The Hobbit has been so massive for so long.” More..

Argyris writes: Next Saturday Elijah Wood will chat with Edith Bowman on BBC Radio 1. If you want to ask him anything about LOTR trilogy…or even better about the upcoming Hobbit movie, you can ask him on BBCradio1 facebook page or send your e-mail to lovely Edith Bowman! The show will be next Saturday morning at 7 o’clock (UK time). More..

From Quint via Aint It Cool News:

I’ll be kicking off a new, temporary, regular column that I’m calling An Unexpected Journey because that’s exactly what it is.

A little over a month ago an email arrived asking of my interest in embedding myself on the set of The Hobbit for the entirety of their location shoot, spending over 2 months in New Zealand rolled in with the crew and writing up their adventures, hassles, triumphs and tribulations as they traveled all over the country shooting bits and pieces from the upcoming two-parter (sic) prequel to Lord of the Rings.

Quint’s first report, titled “An Unexpected Journey: Quint on the set of The Hobbit! Part 1 – Concerning Hobbiton“, comes from Matamata, New Zealand, the location of Hobbiton, and it is filled with all sorts of Hobbitty goodness… and SPOILERS (so read the report at your own peril!)

Some non-spoiler excerpts follow:

  • There were all manner of animals on the set ranging from goats to roosters, pigs, oxen, horses and all of them had handlers there to make sure they were fed, watered and safely munching on the lush green grass of Matamata. They would quickly duck out of frame whenever shots would go up.
  • If you’ve watched the appendices on the Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings films you should recognize Kiran [Shah]’s name. He’s a much loved character around the set. He’s an actor, stunt man and scale double. On Rings he doubled Elijah Wood. [In The Hobbit, Shah will be Martin Freeman’s double.]
  • [Kiran] Shah will also be a Goblin in the film.

So what do you all think? Share your thoughts and speculations on our message boards.