{"id":41682,"date":"2011-01-13T16:20:02","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T21:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=41682"},"modified":"2011-01-13T16:20:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T21:20:02","slug":"hobbit-star-ian-mckellen-reveals-why-he-almost-ditched-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2011\/01\/13\/41682-hobbit-star-ian-mckellen-reveals-why-he-almost-ditched-role\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Hobbit&#8217; Star Ian McKellen Reveals Why He Almost Ditched Role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/mckellen_ian-125x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Ian McKellen\" width=\"125\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-34202 no-lazyload\" \/>From <strong>MTV<\/strong>: Why did it take the man behind Gandalf so long to commit officially to &#8220;The Hobbit&#8221;? In a surprisingly candid post on his website, Ian McKellen opened up on Wednesday (January 12) about behind-the-scenes developments and his own ambivalence surrounding the two-part project.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Could I let Gandalf go? Would anyone else care if I did?&#8221; he wrote, going on to cite the example of the &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; franchise. &#8220;Elsewhere, does anyone care that Michael Gambon was not the first to play Dumbledore?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The issue all along was not whether he still feels creatively energized by Gandalf \u2014 &#8220;I long to do it,&#8221; McKellen told us of the role back in November of 2009. Rather, the sticking point was simply that the production faced delay after delay and, as the 71-year-old McKellen put it, &#8220;All I had to decide was what to do with the time that is given me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>First, producer Peter Jackson and director Guillermo del Toro struggled to get the production off the ground as MGM faced severe financial difficulties, and then a planned date to begin shooting early last year came and went. Del Toro departed the project, Jackson stepped in to direct and the production faced a dustup with New Zealand&#8217;s trade union. The prospect of shooting outside that country bubbled up. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtv.com\/news\/articles\/1655868\/hobbit-star-ian-mckellen-reveals-why-almost-ditched-role.jhtml\">More..<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From MTV: Why did it take the man behind Gandalf so long to commit officially to &#8220;The Hobbit&#8221;?&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[435,1300,4,49,20,74,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guillermo-del-toro","category-hobbit-cast-news","category-hobbit-movie","category-mckellen","category-new_zealand","category-jackson","category-hobbit"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-aQi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}