From Mr. Tumnus to Bilbo Baggins?
Thursday, May 29th, 2008There’s a rumor that is about to spread, starting at “My Park Magazine.” That rumor is that James McAvoy, Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is close to signing to play Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro’s The Hobbit.
James McAvoy is set to play Bilbo Baggins in ‘The Hobbit‘.
Film bosses are rumoured to be close to signing McAvoy – who played the faun Mr. Tumnus in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe‘ – to play the fantasy hero in the big screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s book.
An insider said: “A number of names have privately been doing the rounds, including Daniel Radcliffe and Jack Black but James is the one the film’s bosses really want. They’re expected to have talks with him soon so hopefully it could be confirmed in the not too distant future.”
Director Guillermo del Toro has refused to comment on the rumours, only saying: “I can tell you it’s down to a few names that we all agree upon. For our first choice we all said the same name, it was completely magical.”
‘The Hobbit‘ is the prequel to the ‘Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy.
In the recent movies directed by Peter Jackson, Baggins was played by Ian Holm.
I’d like to point something out, though. They did not get that quote from del Toro with regards to James McAvoy. In fact, no names have been mentioned yet. Not McAvoy, not Jack Black and most certainly not Radcliffe. Daniel Radcliffe will be too busy filming Harry Potter 7 and 8 for The Hobbit, anyway, I am sure.
No, the quote is from Empire Online, which goes on to say: Obviously the script is yet to be written by Jackson, Del Toro and Philippa Boyens, so there won’t be a name attached to this for some time (despite poking with sticks Del Toro was mum on the identity of the actor, who probably doesn’t know he’s in the frame yet). Del Toro says we can expect “at least a year before we announce any casting”. So, while they have a name in mind, you can count any forthcoming rumours as false, at least until the script is written.
We were awarded the show on a Friday, and on Monday, when I arrived in New Zealand, at the start of the second week of principal photography, I first met with Dean Wright to discuss how we were going to create the goat legs for Mr. Tumnus. We were actually working with Giant Studios, a New Zealand effects company, to collaborate with them on a combination of motion capture and animation. We did a test with James McEvoy, the actor playing Tumnus, who wore green pants with target dots on them during filming, and we found that if he could walk on tiptoes during filming, and still say his lines, that it made his body appear more believable as a faun. The first scene we shot with him was the first day of snow work at the main Narnia forest set at Kelly Park, where Lucy comes through the wardrobe for the first time. Giant had their motion capture cameras set up on that set, and basically the way it worked was we’d get the plate from editorial, we’d do the matchmove of the camera movement, and then we’d give the digital camera plate to Giant and they’d do the motion capture integration of the legs to the body. For the leg animation, it was about 90% of the way there, and then we’d do foot interaction, and all the hair, muscle and fur details, to really complete the shot. We were able to use a lot of James’ footprints from the shot to help line up the animated hooves in the final composited shot.
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