Hobbit Forming

All About

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Get the latest photos, news, and more

Along with the CG, there are a considerable amount of ambitious live action sequences, such as the Battle of Helm's Deep. How was it shooting those?
Viggo bore the brunt of the Helm's Deep battle. He had 14 weeks of night shoots in the rain and in the winter, and he was just amazing. He got whacked in the mouth with an Orc sword during one of the fight scenes and his front tooth got snapped off at the root. While any other actor would obviously immediately say, ''Take me to my trailer! Oh my God, my tooth! Stop, stop!'' Viggo just picked up this tooth. He was holding it in his hand and he goes, ''Gimme me some superglue. I'll just glue it back on and we'll keep fighting.'' We literally had to drag him to the car to go get some surgery and dental work done.

With these movies making hundreds of millions of dollars, is it conceivable that the producers could hire writers to script more adventures beyond the trilogy?
I don't think they have the rights to that. The Tolkien estate has very, very strict control. I'm not privy to the contract, but I would pretty much guess that nobody could write any ''Lord of the Rings'' stories to be filmed -- scripts or screenplays. New Line has the rights to adapt these three books, and that's it.

What about filming ''The Hobbit,'' Tolkien's prequel to this trilogy?
I can honestly tell you that [New Line has] never, ever discussed it with me. I've never had a single ''Hobbit'' conversation with anybody from the studio, and I've been working with them for five years now. But I know they've picked up the ''Hobbit'' production rights as part of the ''Lord of the Rings'' package -- essentially to keep anybody else from making a ''Hobbit'' film. The last thing that New Line wanted was to be spending all of this money on ''Lord of the Rings'' movies, and then have a cheesy ''Hobbit'' film get put out that somebody else makes.

Would you consider doing it eventually?
It would be a difficult decision. Difficult in the sense that I have other films that I want to make. I have three or four other ideas that I'm looking forward to doing one day. It would also be tough for me to think of somebody else doing it. But on the other hand, I'd like to pay 12 bucks and go see the ''Hobbit'' that somebody else made and avoid ME doing all the work.