Last week came the official announcement that Guillermo Del Toro would be directing The Hobbit and its sequel. TheOneRing.net was able to talk to Del Toro about the much-anticipated project.

Regarding the cast and who has given interest in returning, Del Toro shared this:

“I had the most charming meeting with Sir Ian, and all bureaucracy pending, he’s on board, as is Andy Serkis,” he said. “We will continue giving you progress reports as the occur. It is our intention that we will not lose any of the key elements.”

We have also been told that Del Toro is going to move to New Zealand for four years with Peter Jackson to film. Del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth used some studio sets to simulate the outdoors, and TheOneRing.net asked if he planned on doing the same for The Hobbit.

“I think green screen photography is exactly like CGI, it is a tool, I don’t think it should be overused. Things like ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ are incredibly dependent on location, we shot on location for more than half the time. Those locations can be enhanced by technology however, both digital and physical. What I would like to avoid is the recreation of the natural environments in CG, I don’t like doing that. The movie is essentially a journey movie, I think you need to use locations as much as possible.”

Del Toro says that he plans to focus more on animatronics and less on pure CGI than seen in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films and wants to push that technology forward much like the original series pushed CGI technology.

You can read the full interview over at TheOneRing.net and talk about it here in our forums.

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