While we probably won’t hear official names for a while longer, Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson are now searching for humans to become small for their live-action adaptation(s) of Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT.
Wide auditions commence this week for every role in the film (except Gandalf, which Sir Ian McKellan incontrovertibly owns). Jackson dismissed earlier rumors that James McAvoy, Daniel Radcliffe or David Tennant (shame, that) had been approached to play diminutive adventurer Bilbo Baggins, stating “we are not really offering any roles to anybody until we’ve done a casting sweep.”
“We want to find the right people,” the lord of THE LORD OF THE RINGS further explains. “Casting someone to portray a hobbit is not as easy as you might imagine. They have to have a particular type of physical appearance and a sensibility. And the same with an elf or a dwarf. These are fantastical characters, but you’ve got to find the right people to play them, the right humans to translate these characters.”
Jackson also denies recent speculation that the first movie will be delayed, claiming the back-to-back shooting will begin in April or May of 2010 for its targeted December 2011 release, with the second part due a year later.
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