Del Toro on Hobbit Shoot and More

As part of the promotion of the recent DVD release of Hellboy II, the Hobbit director Guillermo Del Toro answered some questions about his Hobbit plans.

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

Will there be any cool creatures in Hobbit like in Hellboy 2?
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.

Do you plan to use any particular effects or techniques in the Hobbit that were used in Hellboy II?
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.

When does filming for the Hobbit begin?
It will begin in 2010 and we will shoot for about 370 days or so…

How long did it take to create the script for this movie?
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.

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

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