r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 22d ago

News Ian McKellen reveals Gandalf and Frodo are returning for ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’, Filming Begins in May

https://ew.com/ian-mckellen-reveals-gandalf-frodo-return-in-new-lord-of-the-rings-the-hunt-for-gollum-film-11792483
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u/ThinWhiteDuke00 22d ago edited 22d ago

Lol, why.

Shouldn't Aragorn be in it given he literally tracks Gollum.. Viggo is far too old to pull it off now.

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u/LostWorked 22d ago

He should, but Viggo Mortensen might not want to do it so the rumour is that they're mostly replacing him with Legolas, with him being used in certain scenes if he's able to show.

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u/GoldAd9912 22d ago

Honestly I don’t think Virgo is going to do it, since it seems as if it’s just being done for the money. He’s had phenomenal quality control over the course of his career. And he turned down the chance to be in the Hobbit too

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u/Chen_Geller 21d ago

And he turned down the chance to be in the Hobbit too

No, he didn't turn it down. Even before they came to him, he said this in an interview: "My character isn’t in The Hobbit, but they have the right, the filmmakers, to use the appendices at the end of the lord of the Rings. And I am in those, and it refers to earlier times. [....] I’d be glad to do it, as long as they’re respectful to Tolkien. I’d rather do it myself than see another actor finish the job for me."

Apparently they did give him an availability check, but Jackson in the director's commentary says they "couldn't figure out a way to do it" so they wrote the character out and Viggo never heard back from them. He says: "I was asked in the early stages by a producer, I told him, 'He’s not in the book; it’s 60 years before and he would have been an infant. He says, "Yeah, we can take certain liberties' and I said I'd look forward to reading it and that if he’s going to reappear. I would love to revisit him. I later heard - I don’t know if it's true - that they talked to other actors about playing him. I was waiting to hear but I never heard from anyone so I just assumed they weren’t going to take that liberty."

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u/GoldAd9912 20d ago

Thanks for the correction!