Benedict On "Physicalizing" Smaug The Dragon

Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch discusses the rather unusual role he as for The Hobbit films with Collider in the video below. Not only will he voice Smaug the Dragon, one of the main villains of the films, but he will also provideg the physical performance for the creature. Typically the facial recordings might be used in recreating the performance but apparently that will extend to the full body of the creature to. Should be interesting to see how that works.

Collider: So what’s it like to voice Smaug in The Hobbit?
Cumberbatch: I’m playing Smaug, I mean I’m physicalizing him as a dragon I’m not just doing the voiceover, so it’ll be a physical role which I’m no stranger to. I did Frankenstein at the beginning of the year with Danny Boyle at the National Theater and playing the creature in that was a very full on and sort of corporeal experience. I can’t wait, but the conversations have yet to start really in earnest because they’ve been doing the first film and I’ve been doing the second series of Sherlock and another series which I’m working on now called Parade’s End for HBO and BBC with Tom Stoppard, and Rebecca Hall co-starring, so it’s a world away but come a month’s time we’ll start conversations probably like you and I are having down the line. I’ve already started working out and doing various movement exercises to get myself limber for that all-important jump suit with balls on it, otherwise known as motion-capture. But I can’t wait, I’m really excited. I go to film it in January.