Empedocles
Ossiriand
Nov 10 2010, 3:42pm
Views: 16280
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Here it goes. It was done really fast so sorry for any mistakes you may find
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There was a loud exhalation in New Zealand. This sign of relief had an immediate echo on the Internet. There’s going to be a movie about The Hobbit. Actually, we’re talking about two movies to be released on December 2012 and December 2013 respectively. And what’s most important for New Zealanders, they are going to be shot in the same natural scenarios where The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed.
After overcoming the production delays caused by Guillermo del Toro’s departure (the original director); the October fire that affected the Wellington warehouse where the original trilogy bigatures were stored; MGM bankruptcy filing (which was the producing company of the films), now being financially supported by Warner Bros and New Line; and the New Zealand Government effective negotiations that allowed the movies to be kept in New Zealand due to a special law that amended some labor legislation provisions that displeased Warner….after all of this, it seems that now the pieces fit, that there’s no way back and that the cast is ready to face a one-year shooting schedule under the direction of Peter Jackson.
And in this case, the lottery ticket of the film industry, a prize previously enjoyed by Elijah Wood in The Lord of the Rings, seems to have been bought by Martin Freeman (Aldershot, 1971). He will play Bilbo Baggins, the main character of The Hobbit, the book written by J.R.R Tolkien as a prologue to the Lord of The Rings.
However, before that, certain previous commitments must be met, and some time ago Freeman signed a contract committing himself to portray a teacher in Animals, the debut film of Catalan filmmaker Marçal Forés, which is now being shot in Barcelona. While Freeman plays this English teacher, The Hobbit machine, which must live up to the original trilogy (which received 30 Oscar nominations, 17 Hollywood Awards and a global box office close to 2,200 millions of euros) has already been started-up. Initial budget: over € 480 million. ¿Duration of the shoot?
”I know my work plan”, says Freeman. “I start in January, then I’ll have a break in the summer so I can shoot the second season of Sherlock, the BBC show where I portray Watson, and then I’ll be back in New Zealand in September in order to finish the movie by the end of the year”. The Englishman says summer because he’s thinking about the northern hemisphere seasons, but it will be winter in New Zealand. “I really didn’t care much about whether the film was going to be shot or not [sic]. I worry about my family (he has two small children) and whether they will have to move in with me. They will, of course, but that’s why I was most interested in knowing if we were going to be shooting in Eastern Europe or New Zealand”.
Peter Jackson will direct, a little bit due to him not having any other choice, because although he is one of the co-writers of the script, together with his wife Fran Walsh, and also the producer of both films, he wanted to keep himself away from the director chair. However, after several delays, original director Guillermo del Toro left the project. Over the phone, the Mexican told us: “It was a heart-breaking thing for me. We had already designed Smaug the Dragon, Mirkwood’s spiders, the Warg wolves… everything was visually stunning”. And he adds: “To me, the best possible Bilbo Baggins is Martin Freeman”. “I’m really thankful for those words”, says Freeman. Jackson had the same thing to say about him: “Only a few times I’ve come across one actor and I know, in that very same instant, that he was born to play a specific role. And Martin is one of those actors”. Freeman’s answer “I had run into Peter a few times and in February I sent him a tape with my screen test as Bilbo. Del Toro answered with a really kind comment saying that I had been chosen to play Bilbo, no matter what was being said on the Internet. When Peter took the reins of the film, we spoke during the Soccer World Cup and he told me what was going on with the project”. Freeman is fascinated by the small aspects of this huge film: “It’s not a contradiction, it’s just that Peter always does the writing with his wife, Fran, and with Phillipa Boyens, and has Carolynne Cunningham as his right-hand. They have this “big family” approach to things, and they seem to breath faith into every project they’re involved with”.
Freeman assures that he chooses his projects based on the scripts: “It’s the most important thing for me. That’s why I’m here shooting this film with Forés. It’s obviously not because of the money. Mi priority has always been to find a great script”. Not always. “It’s true, there isn’t a final script for The Hobbit yet. That’s why Peter can’t tell me much about how Bilbo is going to be. In spite of that, I trust him completely. He’s obviously going to be younger than the Bilbo portrayed by Ian Holm in the Lord of the Rings. I love the fact that the majority of the characters I’ve portrayed in the past always react to something, Bilbo, on the contrary, is an active character: he creates his own adventure”.
The remaining names of the cast are not as well known as Freeman, with the exception of James Nesbitt, and none of them is even close to being considered a movie star. "Well, my career has always been step-by-step, always in the search of good scripts: Love actually, The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, TV shows like The Office or Sherlock... This is a stroke of luck for me. I look for honesty in every work I do, I never wanted to have a bigger pool in my yard”. Freeman admits that he has just finished reading The Hobbit “I wasn’t a fan of Tolkien before, I am now”, and he also says that he has done some make-up tests: "A couple of weeks ago, I tried Bilbo’s hairy feet for the first time, and also the ears, although mine are big enough already, and the hair too. Moreover, they made molds out of those parts of my body since I’m going to be using prosthetics for many months". “¿How did I look? Really different... but I’m ready to be Bilbo".
Please, give us back Glorfindel!!!
(This post was edited by Empedocles on Nov 10 2010, 3:44pm)
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