Warner Bros. has released set photos from The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum to celebrate Hobbit Day, revealing a first look at Frodo and the Shire.
The prequel movie, currently filming in New Zealand with a release date of December 17, 2027, sees Elijah Wood reprise his iconic role as Frodo Baggins. This peek at the character, released on Warner Bros.' TikTok page, doesn’t tell us much other than Frodo looks a lot like Frodo should. Unfortunately, as we’re only seeing Frodo’s back, we can’t see Wood’s face in character. I suspect that’s because the de-aging technology will be applied later on, so showing the character in full now wouldn’t accurately represent what fans will see in theaters.
But we do see plenty of Hobbits in the shire, as well as director and Gollum actor Andy Serkis working a camera. It’s all very nostalgic and pretty.
The Hunt for Gollum will reunite Serkis with his fellow Lord of the Rings co-stars Ian McKellen as Gandalf and the aforementioned Wood as Frodo, with Lee Pace reprising his role as elven king Thranduil from The Hobbit film trilogy. New additions to the cast include Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan, who takes over from Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays a new "lethal elf" named Seren.
Serkis hit the headlines in July when he discussed The Hunt for Gollum's use of AI to digitally de-age some of The Lord of the Rings' aging stars, who need to look younger than they did 25 years ago in Fellowship of the Ring. "There’s a little bit of de-aging for some of the characters and machine learning is part of the process," Serkis said.
The movie revolves around various characters tracking down Gollum in order to discover the location of the One Ring. This time period is briefly shown during Fellowship's prologue, and covered briefly in Tolkien's original writings.
"I'm leaving him to it," The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson said previously of Serkis taking the helm. "I'm there to help if I can help, if I can be of assistance at certain times, I'm there. But I'm giving him as much freedom as I can, because giving Andy freedom to make that movie will result in the best possible film."
Image credit: Warner Bros.
Wesley Yin-Poole
Director, News
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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