Del Toro DNA Still Part of The Hobbit, New Thorin Pic

At one point Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy) was set to direct The Hobbit (now trilogy) with Peter Jackson as executive producer. He participated through most of pre-production of the movie but had to leave due to other obligations when it became clear that the film would probably be about a year late in starting due to then MGM's bankruptcy (WB more or less has taken over financing the films). Based on comments from Jackson, that design athestic informed Peter's take but he did make many alternations to fit his vision. Quote below, video here. Also here is a new image of Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield sporting the elvish sword Orcrist aka "Goblin Cleaver" that Bilbo helps find on their adventure. Goblin and Orc mean the same thing in Middle-Earth.

[Guillermo] had designed a lot of the movie . . . I looked at his designs when he took over and a lot of his designs are very Guillermo . . . it was very much stuff that you would recognize from Pan's Labyrinth or Hellboy. It was his artistic vision and I couldn't make that movie. I looked at his designs and I said the only person who can make a Guillermo Del Toro movie is Guillermo. It shouldn't be me. I can't put my head into somebody else's idea — I have to generate it from the beginning. So really I redesigned the film pretty much. Some of Guillermo's DNA is in there — there were some things he did that I thought were pretty cool and I've taken bits of pieces of his stuff — kind of altering it and changing it as I saw it. But the film was largely redesigned.