In a new interview with Ain’t It Cool News, Viggo Mortensen talked briefly about the possibility of appearing in either Hobbit I or II, declaring that he’s still open to the latter.

Capone: So, I’ve got to ask this, or I’ll lose my job…

VM: THE HOBBIT? [laughs]

Capone: Yeah. I’m guessing that Peter Jackson has not contacted you about participating, but would you even want there to be a place for you?

VM: Well, the first movie, if it’s going to be the book, I’m not in the book.

Capone: Right, exactly.

VM: The second movie, I would think they would do for story fun and also for economic reasons, I’m sure.

Capone: I would think it would like THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RING.

VM: Yeah, but that’s what I’m saying. They would do that, using what they legally have the right to, which I assume are the appendices of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I don’t think they have the right to take whatever they want from the SILMARILLION, for example, but they could take from the appendices.

For example, we shot a sequence, Liv Tyler and I, and it’s in Lorien, and we’re walking around, and it’s when I’m still…you know, I’m wearing clothes that are more like something you’d see Legolas wearing. I have no beard. I have really long hair, and it’s partly in a braid. And, I’m wearing definitely elvish kind of clothing. I look like some young elvish lord. And, I think, I’m barefoot, walking in these flowers with her. And, we’re in that courtship period, you know, and because of our aging thing, we look similar. I look a little younger than usual, the no beard helps and all that.

And, it’s a memory, right, and it was meant to be used as one of those moments where I’m remembering something about her. They didn’t use it. So, they could use that, and then they could shoot other things in that vein. I don’t know, they could make up a certain amount of things that would be in the spirit of Tolkien, I have no doubt. People ask me about it a lot, and I say, obviously, “Nobody’s come to me,” but I won’t be surprised if they do, if I’m right for it in their eyes. Obviously, as an actor who originated on film that role, I’d rather finish the job, all things being equal, meaning, Is it a good script, and do they have their shit together, than see another actor do it.

Capone: Right. Well, yeah, yeah, nobody wants that.

VM: I mean, I’m as interested in principle in the idea as, maybe, some of your readers are. [laughs]

Capone: Well, that’s good to hear.

VM: Yeah, why not?

Source: The One Ring.

In a live chat, Guillermo Del Toro talked about the upcoming Hobbit movie:

Q:Universal announced a pretty busy slate for you after “The Hobbit.” Will we see a Hellboy 3?
A:If its up to me- yes!! But it is a corporate decision and regimes change very rapidly at these studios.

Q:There any professionals who worked with you on Hellboy II that will be joining you on the Hobbit?
A:Hopefully Mignola, Barlowe, Spectral Motion, Guillermo Navarro and others…

Q:Will you be using Danny Elfman as a composer again on future projects?
A:Absolutely, but not until after the HOBBIT films.

Q:Do you think filming Hellboy II helped prepare you for filming the Hobbit?
A:Technically, yes- but that’s not the challenge in THE HOBBIT. The challenge is to create and expand a massive universe and be as immersive as the Trilogy was. To approach Tolkien’s book with the right mixture of reverence, enthusiasm and invention.

Q:WILL THERE BE ANY COOL CREATURES IN HOBBIT LIKE HELLBOY2?
A:many many more and we will be pushing the goblin kindgom. we will be pushing smaug, the spiders of mirkwood. we will be pushing them to the edge of technology where we will fuse animatronics and cgi into a seamless new art form in creating creatures, i think.

Q:Do you plan to use any particular effects or techniques in the Hobbit that were used in Hellboy II?
A:Well, yes, but used in a different way. You will see some mind-boggling mixture of CGI / Puppetry like never before. The demarcation of where one technique ends and the other begins will NOT be as clean as in HBII or BLADE II or PAN’S LABYRINTH. I am going to push further than ever on both fronts.

Q:WHEN DOES FILMING FOR THE HOBBIT BEGIN?
A:it will begin in 2010 and we will shoot for about 370 days or so…

Q:At what age did you first read The Hobbit?
A:I believe it was between 10 years old and 11 years old. My first copy of it is dated as printed in 1973 and I know I bought it shortly after being published by a great publishing house called MINOTAURO which was (in my childhood years) like the CRITERION COLLECTION of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

Q:How long did it take to create the script for this movie?
A:For the record- neither Peter Jackson nor I had the faintest contact about the HOBBIT movies prior to the absolute completion of HELLBOY II. I got Peter’s first call in December 2007- way after we wrapped the film. So, the visuals in the HOBBIT movie are not anticipated in the HBII movie.

Q:Will you be working with Guillermo Navarro on The Hobbit?
A:I hope so!!

Q:Does Mike Mignola have any involvement with you on The Hobbit?
A:I hope and pray he joins us at the design stage for a week or two.

Q:Who are your top choices to play Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hobbit Movies?
A:Hopefully, very soon we can reveal that-

In a new interview with Crave Online, Guillermo Del Toro talked briefly about the upcoming Hobbit movie:

Crave Online: I know it’s too early to talk casting, but doesn’t James McAvoy sound like a good idea right about now?
Guillermo del Toro: Really, if I was to answer either way, it would be unfair because I will tell you, Bilbo changes every time we write a new scene. It really is not facetious. Wherever we end up at, it’s going to come out of those pages.
Crave Online: But that was the most publicized rumor.
Guillermo del Toro: Yeah, but the fact is, the only thing I know of McAvoy is his movies. I’ve never met him. We’ve never had a chat and this is not me saying, “I did not have sex with that woman.” It really hasn’t happened. If it happens with any actor, I think it’s going to come out of the pages.
Crave Online: Have you made any casting decisions?
Guillermo del Toro: Not yet. Just the ones that have been announced. There’s not lack of information. It’s not withholding. We really don’t have more information because we’re writing. And literally, like every week, what you discover writing the two movies, writing the two stories, it changes. So every week there’s a discovery and anything we say this week would be contradicted next week. Certainly that would be true in casting. Why create hopes or why create expectations if down the line you’re going to go, “You know what? That was not a good idea.” So we won’t cast it until we finish writing.

Thanks Crave Online!

Today MTV Movies Blog reports that Elijah Wood wants to join in The Hobbit.

“The secondary film would bridge the gap between ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ chronologically,” Wood said, “so conceivably, it could be possible.”

Since the films are still being written, “it’s a ways away” before he would know, Wood said, but the trick is to have Frodo’s appearance not seem like an anachronism, since he wasn’t a part of “The Hobbit” adventure.

“That’s the thing,” Wood said. “I would imagine that if he does exist, it’ll make some sort of sense. Otherwise, I don’t think they would do it. I certainly wouldn’t want to do it. I don’t want to have a whole character piece that doesn’t really exist that they’re cobbling together.”

But he has faith in the filmmakers “in whatever they’re going to do in terms of bringing in any familiar characters back, just knowing their sense of upholding integrity.”

To MTV, it seems like the only logical thing would be to introduce Frodo at the very end. Once Bilbo has returned from his adventure, with all his riches, he becomes the most able relative in Frodo’s family to adopt him after his parents Drogo and Primula die in a boating accident on the Brandywine River. Wood agreed.

“Yeah, potentially,” he said. “There’s a lot we know historically about the characters where that would make sense. And personally, if I was involved, it would be to come on for a tiny little piece and have that be that.”

Who is Bilbo? What is his character like? Guillermo Del Toro has some interesting thoughts on his ideas about Bilbo:

Bilbo is a good-hearted man, and the honesty of Bilbo is in direct contrast to the greed of Smaug, which looms large in the entire narrative, but also in the newly acquired greed and pride of Thorin, who becomes intoxicated with power and gold.

Thanks MTV!

Guillermo Del Toro speaks about Smaug, approaching actors, and other details about the Hobbit in an interview with MTV.

MTV: Do you have the picture yet of the Smaug you want to create?

Del Toro: I discussed the Smaug appearance with great detail with [Tolkien illustrators] John Howe and Alan Lee, and there’s some illustrations that John did out of that meeting in London that approximate Smaug. I cannot say much more. He is becoming clearer and clearer.

Thanks MTV!

In an interview with MTV News, Guillermo Del Toro refused to fractionalize Tolkiens book into component parts.

“We don’t even call it the bridge movie, we just call it ‘The Movie.’ And this is great. When we found what reverberated, and we found it in one of our virtual meetings - we understood. It’s a movie.”

It will be just like The Lord of The Ring, three separate volumes intented in a single, large one.

The division made with The Hobbit is due to solve the narrating issues of the second episode.

“We all agree that if we do our job right, it should all feel like a continuous journey. That’s what we’re striving for,” Del Toro said. “You should see a movie that’s five pictures long. If we do our job right, you put in ‘The Hobbit’ and you wind up watching the entire Pentology!”

What a long day it would be!, “But it’s a good day!” Del Toro laughed. About the end of the first episode, will it follow the text accurately?

“We are finding out,” Guillermo said. “I think Smaug dies in the first movie. So draw your own conclusions.”

Do you think Guillermo Del Toro has it all planned?

Guillermo del Toro recently appeared at the Director’s Guild of America in midtown Manhattan as part of The New Yorker Festival series of talks. During the conversation with New Yorker staff writer Daniel Zalewski, del Toro discussed where exactly his mind was in Middle Earth.

“I find you have to discipline yourself to write in the morning, and then watch and read in the afternoons stuff that seems relevant, even in a tangential way. For example, reading or watching World War I documentaries or books that I think inform ‘The Hobbit’ strangely enough, because I believe it is a book born out of Tolkien’s generation’s experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse. I think it’s a turning point that you need to familiarize yourself with.I’m Starting.Peter Jackson is such.

He has lots of thoughts about this New version of the Hobbit coming in 2011!

Thanks UGO!

Guillermo del Toro recently spoke about The Hobbit in The Directors Guild of America. Also he talked about the dragon Smaug.

“All my life I’ve been fascinated by dragons. I was born under the Chinese sign of The Dragon. All my life I’m collecting dragons. It’s such a powerful symbol, and in the context of ‘The Hobbit’ it is used to cast its shadow through the entire narrative. Essentially, Smaug represents so many things: greed, pride… he’s ‘the Magnificent,’ after all. The way his shadow is cast in the narrative you cannot then show it and have it be one thing, he has to be the embodiment of all those things. He’s one of the few dragons that will have enormous scenes with lines. He has some of the most beautiful dialogues in those scenes! The design, I’m pretty sure that will be the last design we will sign off on, and the first design we have attempted. It is certainly a matter of turning every stone before figuring out what he looks like, because what he looks like will tell you what he is.”

He is really excited about the movie and hope to see him soon in the shooting

Thanks ComingSoon!

In an interview with Empire magazine, Christopher Lee said he was ready to return to the scenarios if he gets a call from the producers of the Hobbit.

“Somewhere, somehow, and it was never actually explained, Saruman turns and it’s probably the Palantír (the wizard’s crystal ball thingy) that makes Saruman realise that if Sauron can do this, why can’t I do it and Saruman wants to become The Lord Of The Rings himself. I’d be interested in seeing how that transition from good to evil occurred and, yes, of course I would return to the role if I was asked.”

Although Saruman doesn’t feature at the Hobbit, he can play lots of scene at The Hobbit 2 just as explained.