Jackson Discusses Role Reprisals for Hobbit

In an interview with MTV while promoting The Lovely Bones, The Hobbit Executive Producer Peter Jackson discusses the possible roles from Lord of the Rings that may appears in the films and explains why others will not.

"Gandalf, being a 2,000-year-old wizard, is still around and plays a major role in 'The Hobbit,' and we're having Ian McKellen reprise," explained the filmmaker, who is executive-producing the flick and writing the screenplay. "There's a couple of other characters: Elrond, who was played by Hugo Weaving [in the original films], and there's a possibility of Galadriel, who was played by Cate Blanchett."

"In some respects, it's a prequel," Jackson said of the flick, which he plans to begin filming in mid-2010. "In book terms, the world of 'The Hobbit' takes place 60 years before 'The Lord of the Rings,' as it was written by Tolkien. So, not a lot of the characters actually feature, because they weren't around yet."

"Screenwriting is my favorite part of the whole process. I'm very happy being one of the writing team on 'The Hobbit,' and we've written the first script. It's two movies, and we've written the first script, which the studio responded well to. And we're now halfway through the second script."

"They are elves, so once again, in the realm of Middle-earth, they're immortal, they don't age," he said of Galadriel and Elrond, the only returning "LOTR" main roles besides Gandalf in his script. "We have a process that would start with showing them the script. We're not [beginning] any official process until we have the 'official' script that they can read."

Considering that money and contracts became a huge issue with the cast of the trilogy, getting Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving to reprise their roles could prove difficult. Then again, New Line Cinema is no longer involved which may help the cause.