Andy Serkis has defended the casting of the next Lord of the Rings film after the fantasy franchise faced criticism over its lack of diversity.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old actor, best known for playing Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will direct and star in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.<\/p>\n
The film, which is due to be released in 2027, stars Jamie Dornan, Anya Taylor-Joy, Kate Winslet and Leo Woodall, with Elijah Wood and Sir Ian McKellen returning as Frodo Baggins and Gandalf respectively.<\/p>\n
The franchise has faced criticism over the years for its predominantly white casts, with some observers raising similar concerns about the new film.<\/p>\n
Speaking to BBC News, Serkis said the filmmakers would not cast actors simply to meet diversity targets.<\/p>\n
“Tolkien himself was influenced a lot by Norse mythology, there\u2019s a lot of that feeling,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Yes, there have been criticisms.<\/p>\n
“This particular film is somewhat acknowledging that. But we don\u2019t think we will be doing a politically correct just-casting-for-the-sake-of-casting-and-ticking-boxes version of the film. So, it\u2019s only where relevant basically.”<\/p>\n
Serkis also revealed more about the story, describing the film as “a deep dive” into Gollum\u2019s past and the origins of the One Ring.<\/p>\n
“It sits absolutely between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies and books,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It is very much a deep dive into the psychology and history of Gollum before he became Gollum, but also with a very burning question from Gandalf about what the potential origin of this ring that Bilbo Baggins has is.<\/p>\n
“The hunt takes place in two different dimensions really and that\u2019s about as far as I can say at the moment.”<\/p>\n
The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is scheduled to open in cinemas in December 2027. It will be followed by The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, which is being co-written by US talk show host Stephen Colbert.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Serkis has defended the casting of the next Lord of the Rings film after the fantasy franchise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-549371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}