With around 5 months left of filming, Scottish comedian and actor Billy Connolly is the latest addition to the cast of The Hobbit. Connolly will play Dain Ironfoot, a great dwarf warrior and cousin of Thorin Oakenshield (played by Richard Armitage).

In the press release director Peter Jackson confirmed Connolly will be the final actor to join the films:

“We could not think of a more fitting actor to play Dain Ironfoot, the staunchest and toughest of Dwarves, than Billy Connelly, the Big Yin himself. With Billy stepping into this role, the cast of “The Hobbit” is now complete. We can’t wait to see him on the Battlefield!”

Jackson’s reference to the Battlefield is relevant because Dain Ironfoot is mainly involved in the Battle of Five Armies, so Connelly’s casting suggests they’ll be shooting that soon.

Connolly has appeared in films such as The Last Samurai and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and will be seen later this year in Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet. He’ll also provide the voice of King Fergus in Pixar’s Brave.

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set to open December 14, 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.

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Last year Evangeline Lilly (Lost, Real Steel) joined the cast of The Hobbit as Woodland Elf Tauriel, a character not originally in J.R.R Tolkien’s book. Lilly said Peter Jackson and the team decided to add Tauriel to “round out the story” as an adaptation, and to add some much needed female characters (the only other female character is Galadriel played by Cate Blanchett).

In a new interview Evangeline Lilly said Tauriel will be more prominent in the second film, and the role has actually been expanded from when she originally read the scripts.

From EW:

Yes, she is a warrior. She’s actually the head of the Elven guard. She’s the big shot in the army. So she knows how to wield any weapon, but the primary weapons that she uses are a bow and arrow and two daggers. And she’s lethal and deadly. You definitely wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley next to Tauriel.

She’s not in the first film very much. She comes into the first film near the end, and has a very small part to play. Her role in the second film is much more involved. Although, I have to say, when I first read the scripts and took the job, she had a lot less going on in the second film. I think the role is becoming a bit more demanding than I had expected it to be. There’s a lot more for me to do now, which is a lot of fun, but it’s a little more pressure.

Lilly continued to say that she’s got around 5 more months of filming left to go, and she’s been on and off set for the past six, so she’ll probably have a decent amount of screentime. Book purists may not like the idea of totally new characters being introduced, but characters such as Tauriel have the potential to add a little extra to the movie.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens December 14th, followed by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13th, 2013.

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Days after releasing the first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson has given fans another Christmas gift by uploading the fifth video blog on to his Facebook page. This video follows the cast and crew as they move from shooting in a studio to shooting on location, and we get to see Elijah Wood, Martin Freeman and the team filming at the Hobbiton set.

Watch below:

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set to open December 14, 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.

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Peter Jackson’s video blogs from the set have kept us occupied over the past few months, but today Warner Bros. finally released the first official trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Watch below:

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set to open December 14, 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.

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The Adventures of Tintin has been rolling out across Europe and other countries since the end of October, and so far it has amassed a box office total of $220 million, with more still to come. Given its budget of $135 million the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson collaboration is already entering sequel territory, and that’s even before it hits North America, Australia, and New Zealand later this month.

In a recent interview Spielberg’s long-time producing partner Kathleen Kennedy (Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park) suggested the Tintin sequel could begin shooting as early as next summer for a late-2014 or summer 2015 release.

From Collider:

The first Tintin has been very successful around the world. Mr. Jackson is very caught up in The Hobbit for a while. Assuming that it’s a success in America, when do you envision a sequel being able to move forward? Is it being moved forward right now?

Kennedy: Oh yeah it is being moved forward, in fact Steven and I were talking about it this morning. We’re working on a script right now, we’ll see a script probably February or March. If we can do some camera capture this summer, which I think we could do, then we would be on track to have the movie either Christmas 2014 or summer 2015, and so that’s what we’re looking at right now.

Peter Jackson has already confirmed he’ll be directing the sequel after he finishes shooting The Hobbit, which may be sometime next summer. The convenient thing about Tintin is that Spielberg and his team were able to shooting all the motion-capture elements of the film in just 32 days (March 2009 to be exact), and then Spielberg and Jackson supervised Weta Digital’s work on the visuals for 2+ years.

Originally it was thought that the second film would be based on the comics The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun, but screenwriter Anthony Horowitz told the BBC last month that the direction of the sequel was “still under discussion” but “if Prisoners Of The Sun is not the second film it’ll be the third film”.

Horowitz, Spielberg and Jackson will probably be working on the story for the next outing so that some shooting can begin next year. While we may not be seeing a movie based on Prisoners of the Sun for a while, here’s the plot description from Amazon:

“After The Seven Crystal Balls set the eerie stage, Tintin and his friends continue their adventures in Peru. There Tintin rescues an orange-seller named Zorrino from being bullied, and the young man becomes their guide in their quest to find the Temple of the Sun. But they find more than they bargained for and end up in a hot spot. Calculus and the Thompsons provide their usual comic relief.”

Where would you like the Tintin sequel to go?

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Peter Jackson and his team have managed to find ways of including Frodo and Legolas into The Hobbit movies, despite the fact the characters didn’t appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s book. So what about Aragorn?

In a recent interview to promote A Dangerous Method Viggo Mortensen said he was at one point asked to wield his sword again when there were plans for a “bridge movie” set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but as that plan was scrapped he won’t be appearing in either film.

From Movies.com:

Has Peter Jackson asked you to return to Middle Earth in the Hobbit movie in any capacity?

Mortensen: At one point, the producers asked if I would do it and I said sure if Aragorn is supposed to be in the bridge story because he’s not in The Hobbit. I would rather do it than see someone else do it, but I’ve never been asked and they’re shooting the movie. I’m not in it unless it there is some last-minute plan they have, but I thought I would have heard of it by now. Orlando Bloom and Cate Blanchett shot something, but they’re elves and don’t change as rapidly. As you know, Aragorn is half elf and also lives a couple hundred years or more and he could be in a bridge, but I have to assume it isn’t going to happen. That was an important period in my life and I will always be grateful that the trilogy was so successful and gave me a lot of new opportunities. I never would have gotten A History of Violence, no matter how much David wanted me, had it not been for my newfound notoriety.

The “bridge film” would have been based on appendix material written by J.R.R. Tolkien, but Guillermo del Toro decided against making it when he was on-board as director as he believed the narrative and characters from The Hobbit alone are rich enough to fit into two films. It would have been great to see characters like Aragorn again, but focusing solely on The Hobbit and expanding it in places will probably work out for the best.

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The fourth Peter Jackson video blog from the set of The Hobbit focuses on the 3D, specifically the way they use the RED cameras, shooting in 5k, how much of a difference the 48 frames per second will make for the viewers and probably for the first time in the making of a movie, 3D artwork. So grab your red-cyan glasses and watch this awesome video blog right after the break.

This 10 minutes and 46 second video blog goes very in depth on the 3D and shows probably the most we’ve seen from The Hobbit yet. Peter Jackson talks about the original Lord of the Rings and how he would have filmed it in 3D if he had the possibility back then. Instead he made a lot of 3D pictures on the set of the trilogy so look forward to those in some fancy The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey 3D Blu-ray.

Because they use such big lens, getting the right separation with the RED cameras was definitely a challenge and we see how they solved that with special rigs that can actually adjust the convergence point of the 3D on the fly. We also see how challenging working in 3D is for the makeup and wardrobe team and how the sets had to be painted in very bright colors so that it looks right when shown in the darkening 3D.

48 RED cameras and 17 3D rigs are used to shoot The Hobbit and instead of giving the cameras numbers, they named them after family members or friends. At the end of the video they show how they made 3D artwork by having two artists, one working in red, the other in blue, side by side. To really appreciate their work you need a pair of red-cyan glasses.

The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey is directed by Peter Jackson and stars Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Hugo Weaving, Evangeline Lily, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and Ian Holm among others. The film follows the story of Bilbo Baggins and his journey to the Lonely Mountain accompanied by 13 dwarfs, to reclaim a treasure stolen from them by the dragon Smaug. It is set to open December 14th 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13th 2013.

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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting the UK and Europe on October 26th, and positive reviews are popping up everywhere.

Paramount Pictures is still gearing up for a December release in the US though, and they’ve released a new full length trailer which is probably the best one yet. If you haven’t been sold by the previous trailers for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s collaboration, you will be now.

Watch below:

In the film, co-written by Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Jamie Bell stars as journalist and adventurer Tintin with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing detective twins Thompson and Thomson and Daniel Craig playing villainous pirate Red Rackham.

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In 10 days Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting screens throughout Europe, and the first set of reviews have started to appear online.

The Good

Empire – 4 stars:

The pace throughout is rat-a-tat-tat quick, the plot tripping along, and the exposition breathless. You have a job keeping up, but never at the expense of the sheer goodwill. While luxuriating in its pre-existing universe, here is a film imploring you to join in. It would take a hard heart to resist.

Action-packed, gorgeous, and faithfully whimsical: Hergé thought Spielberg the only director capable of filming Tintin. He was onto something.

Entertainment Focus – 4 stars:

The fact that The Adventures of Tintin is so watchable is a major shock to me. As someone completely indifferent to the books and not that excited about this project in general, it completely blindsided me. Full of action, excitement, amazing visuals and hilarious set-pieces, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is a major success and one that I heartily recommend.

Digital Spy – 4 stars:

This performance capture is far from the glassy-eyed uncanny valley that’s plagued Robert Zemeckis. Through Spielberg’s digital lens there’s charm, warmth and, most importantly, the illusion of life with these characters.

With its dizzying spectacle and fast-paced action, The Adventures of Tintin is top notch entertainment and miles ahead of its performance capture predecessors in its wit and visual sophistication.

The Average

The Telegraph – 3 stars:

The film is also hobbled by its reliance on performance capture simply because the graphics are not good enough. Weta Digital might be able to render the thousand or so hairs in Tintin’s quiff with ease, but watch their PCs’ gears crunch when they try to digitise a personality.

This has quite a few of the hallmarks of a decent family movie, but as a fan of both the Tintin adventures and Spielberg’s cinematic swashbuckling since childhood, it left me underwhelmed.

Total Film – 3 stars:

Like the 3D, an adventure that’s serviceable but doesn’t reach out and grab you as often as you’d expect. Frenetic to a fault, it’ll divert the under-10s; older viewers may feel there’s not enough lift in the quiff.

The Bad:

None yet!

I’ll update with more reviews when they appear.

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Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting UK screens later this month, and a new UK trailer has been released online in preparation.

As the movie is pretty much complete now the action scenes are prominent in the trailer, with most of the new footage involving a motorcycle and a sidecar. We also see shots of ships on fire, and some amazing scenery from Tintin’s travels.

Watch below:

In the film, co-written by Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Jamie Bell stars as journalist and adventurer Tintin with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing detective twins Thompson and Thomson and Daniel Craig playing villainous pirate Red Rackham. Paramount will release The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in the US in December, with Sony releasing the film in Europe and overseas over the next few months.

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