Loaded Couch Potatoes

Looks like it’s officially time to start once again checking in on TheOneRing.net every day for a while.

Guillermo del Toro, director of the in-pre-production The Hobbit, confirmed on the Simon Mayo show this week that three actors were officially cast for the two-film adaptation: Ian McKellan (playing Gandalf), Andy Serkis (playing Gollum), and Hugo Weaving (playing Elrond).

More casting announcements are bound to start rolling in over the course of the next few months.

Christopher Tolkien spoke recently with the Guardian about his father’s newly-published book, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.  The book consists of J.R.R. Tolkien’s poems based on the Norse myths and legends, and was edited from the author’s notes by his son, who has served as curator of his father’s legacy for over thirty years, beginning with the publication of The Silmarillion.

Tolkien spoke with the Guardian on subjects such as how the poems will be accepted by Middle-Earth fans, how he decided to work on The Silmarillion, reading sections of the yet-to-be-published Lord of the Rings while in the air force, and his opinion of how his father woud take his current popularity.

According to an exclusive at Empire, producer Peter Jackson and director Guillermo del Toro have come to the conclusion that the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit deserves to be told not in a single movie, but in two films.

Always planned to be two films, the Lord of the Rings prequel project had initially been discussed as consisting of The Hobbit for the first film only, with the second film being material that would directly link The Hobbit with The Fellowship of the Ring.

Jackson notes that having both films to tell the story of The Hobbit will allow the films to be a bit more in the style of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.