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Filming is underway on “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” actor/filmmaker Andy Serkis confirming with Variety that shooting began a little over a week ago with much of the same crew from the previous trilogies all returning.
The cast, however, gets a shake-up. While Serkis, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood and Lee Pace reprise their roles from previous films, Anya Taylor-Joy, Kate Winslet, Leo Woodall and Jamie Dornan join the action.
Asked how Dornan is doing as Strider/Aragorn, he says: “I’ve got to say, Jamie’s doing extremely well. He’s fantastic”. Serkis was also asked whether the new film will use any AI to achieve its aims. He says:
“Not at present, other than some of the de-aging. There’s a little bit of de-aging for some of the characters and machine learning is part of the process.
When you think about it, in the original “The Lord of the Rings” films, Peter created MASSIVE, which was a program which allowed 1000s of orcs to all have their own individual mindset. So that is a brilliant example of an incredible use of AI.
But we’re not creating AI shots in our movie, every shot is created in a traditional way. One of the things actually that I really wanted to do with this film was to bring back all of the great filmmaking skills, from miniatures to prosthetics and marry them up, because that’s my taste. I like it when you mix up different filmmaking techniques.
He was also asked if Peter Jackson will get a cameo, Serkis saying: “Well, we’ll have to see about that.” Jackson is producing the film with his regular writing/producing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum” is slated to open in cinemas December 17th 2027.
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