We haven’t heard much from Guillermo del Toro recently, with the great director keeping his head down at the moment so he can work hard on his forthcoming adaptation of The Hobbit.
But he showed up in LA last night at a special do to launch the Region 1 DVD of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and our pals at Comingsoon.net grabbed him for a few quick words on the status of his take on Tolkien.
“Literally, like every week, what you discover writing the two movies, writing the two stories, it changes. So, every week there's a discovery, and anything we say this week would be contradicted next week,” he said.
Ah. But he was confident enough to speak about some of his plans for the movie’s effects, which will see an increase in practical elements. “We want to do a muscle-driven, radio-controlled suits for a couple of things,” he revealed. “I already started that with Wink [the giant ape-like troll] in Hellboy II. Wink was pushed as far as we could within the time limits and the budget limits of the movie and we're going to take what we learned and apply it.”
Del Toro also talked about what he sees as the single biggest challenge of The Hobbit: the villainous dragon, Smaug.
“Smaug is the creature in The Hobbit,” he said. “The way Tolkien wrote it, already, is magnificent. It's already a fantastic character. In my mind, what we're going to attempt on the design of this creature and the creation of this creature needs to push the envelope beyond anything you've ever seen on that kind of creature.”
Such as…?
“Smaug has certain characteristics that make him unique already. I am bursting at the seams about spilling the beans, but I won't because I would be shot."
Well, we don’t want that, Guillermo. To read more from the Mexican director on the current status of casting and whatnot, do pop over to Comingsoon and tell ‘em Empire says hello. They'll know what it means.