Thanks to message board member Theodred for alerting us to this story from scifiwire.com: Ian McKellen, whom we expect will put on Gandalf’s gray robes in director Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Hobbit movies, tells us he’s finally read the script for the films. And, no, he won’t tell us much about it, except that producer Peter Jackson (who co-wrote the script with longtime Lord of the Rings collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, as well as del Toro) wrote it specifically for him.
“As Peter has said, they loved writing Gandalf [for The Hobbit] because they knew who they were writing him for,” McKellen told us exclusively in an interview last week while promoting AMC’s The Prisoner. “There are a lot of characters in The Hobbit, including, crucially, Bilbo, and they don’t know who’s going to play Bilbo. So it’s extremely attractive that this part has been written for me. The other Gandalf was written for, well, just as Gandalf. There’s lots for me to enjoy, in all sorts of ways. And I couldn’t be happier. But I’m sworn to secrecy. I’m not to say anything at all about the script.” More..
