Slash Film is reporting that David Yates MAY be the new director for ‘The Hobbit’.
I’ve been seeing on a few industry insider tracking boards that David Yates is supposedly the studios top choice to direct The Hobbit. Note: we have no real confirmation of any talks taking place, so for now take it all as purely rumor.
Yates is best known as the director of the last few Harry Potter films: Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Part I and II of the Deathly Hallows. As you know, Guillermo del Toro recently stepped down from directing the big screen adaptation, but would continue to collaborate with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens on the Hobbit screenplays until they are finished.
Yates definitely knows how to handle the stress of adapting a highly anticipated big screen fantasy adaptation with epic-sized special effects and has an established relationship with Warner Bros.
In another new interview Tom Felton discusses Deathly Hallows and informs readers that even the cast doesn’t know where the movie has been split.
Actor Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy, says despite the shoot now coming to an end, nobody has been told exactly where the break will happen. “We don’t know where the cut’s going to be. Everyone keeps asking us ‘where is the cut?’ but they’ve shot it kind of all as one and I think they’re going to wait and see whatever feels right,” he explained. He added: “I’m very excited to see what comes out of it!”
The young star says it did come as a relief to the cast when they first learned that filmmakers weren’t going to try and cram the book’s big ending into one film.
“It was nothing but a sigh of relief for us as there was so much in the book we thought ‘oh my God, they’re going to cut characters out, they’ll leave bits out’ It’s the most important chapter of the whole story really so it was important to go into it in as much detail as possible so we were all thrilled about it,” he said.
Tom admitted he had mixed feelings about finally saying goodbye to his character Draco. “I kind of use him as therapy in a way. I get to build up these angers and frustrations and then vent it through this evil little Hitler child. Without it I may have to go to therapy – maybe it’s time to vent that way!” he laughed.
The Times has a new article where it talks about what WB will be doing with Leavesden Studios.
As the final two films of JK Rowling’s series approach completion, a new “Hogwarts experience” is to open in the studios where they are made. The visitor attraction will include recreations of some of the boy wizard’s haunts, including the Hogwarts school hall and Albus Dumbledore’s study. The plans, part of an expansion of Leavesden, the Warner Bros studio in Hertfordshire, are Britain’s answer to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a 20-acre attraction at the Universal resort in Orlando, Florida, due to open this Friday.Although the Leavesden site will not be as large and will consciously not be a theme park, it will provide fans with the real costumes and sets used in the films. There will be replicas of characters, as well as clothes worn by Hermione Granger, played by Emma Watson, Voldemort, Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Filius Flitwick and the Weasley family.
The Times is reporting that Michael Gambon will also be in attendance at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park opening!
Tomorrow, many of the actors from the Potter films, including Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, and Sir Michael Gambon, who is the headmaster Dumbledore, will fly to Florida for the opening of the new attraction, part of Universal’s existing Islands of Adventure theme park. It will include a steam-belching Hogwarts Express, the village of Hogsmeade and, towering over them all, a reproduction of Hogwarts itself.
