THE HOBBIT was del Toro's "Christmas gift"
Also confirms the four year shoot and that Andy Serkis & Ian McKellen are already on board to reprise their roles of Gollum & Gandalf.
One of the coolest plus points of Guillermo del Toro being in charge of The Hobbit is that he's so good and open to his fans (which is why he keeps telling us of projects he is interested in making, as if they were really happening - he can't help himself!) that he will keep us up to date every step or the way. I mean how many directors out there would give such a great interview about his intentions for the movie just hours after it was officially annouced as happening to the world.
Here's an excerpt from a good del Toro interview (I could post it all here but that would be wrong) he conducted with The One Ring, where he tells us what the very controversial second movie after The Hobbit will be like...The Hobbit, the book, is really one self-contained film, so for the second movie we sat down and worked it out. When we did this we got really excited because this second film is not a tag on, its not filler, its an integral part of telling the story of those 50 years of history lost in the narrative. There will be certain things that we will see from the first movie but from a different point of view, but it will feel like a volume, in the 5 volumes of the entire story. It will not feel like a bridge, Ive been hearing it called a bridge film, its not, its an integral chapter of the story, and I think were all on the same page.In the interview he also confirms the four year shoot in New Zealand, the casting of Andy Serkis & Ian McKellen and that he was so close to doing Halo with Peter Jackson but he's happy thinks have worked out like this. He first got word of the offer around December time and called the project his "Christmas gift". Much more on The Hobbit next week when we get a preview page uploaded!