Image details: The Laurence Olivier Awards: Arrivals served by picapp.com

Ian McKellen has confirmed he will don his wizard’s garb again to play the role of Gandalf in upcoming movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit. McKellen told Empire Magazine Gandalf is not the kind of part you turn down.

Guillermo del Toro will direct two prequels to The Lord of the Rings trilogy with Peter Jackson executive producing. Filming is expected to start in 2009 with the first movie coming sometime in 2010 and the sequel in 2011.

These movies are a veritable license to print money for the New Line Cinema/MGM Studios partnership. I know I’ll see them both 2-3 times. More than that if they’re as good as I expect them to be.

Post from: SF Universe

Monaghan has signed on for a role in Fox’s Wolverine based X-Men prequel which focuses on the origins of Marvel Comics’ most popular mutant. The Lord of the Rings and Lost star will play Barnell, a miltary ally of Wolverine’s with the power to harness energy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine goes onto just about every screen in the country in May 2009, a week before J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek revamp hits cinemas. I’ve taken to calling the week-long stretch in between these two blockbusters “The Most Important Week in the History of the Human Evolutionary Process,” but I may be understating things a touch.

Post from: SF Universe