In case you missed it, the interwebs were abuzz yesterday with whispers of Spider-Man star and newly Golden Globe nominated Brothers actor Tobey Maguire possibly being in consideration for the highly-coveted role of Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit. At first glance, this sounds like the worst rumor ever to be started, but in fact, it turned out to have some solid backing to it.
The possibilities began when Latino Review was informed that while promoting Brothers, Maguire was asked about who he would like to work with in the future, to which he replied “Guillermo del Toro. We may have something here in the near future.” Of course, this is way too good to just leave as it is, so LR dug a little deeper and discovered that Maguire was actually in the earliest of chit-chatting stages with producers of The Hobbit about the role.
The first thing that I thought was that there was absolutely NO way this would happen, even if he had entered into some kind of negotiations for the Bilbo role. I don’t think even Tobey Maguire himself could look me dead in the eye and tell me that he was even slightly acceptable for the part. We all love Elijah Wood in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but admit it, if he had to carry the whole movie on his back with that accent, we’d be looking at some alternate cinematic history. If Tobey were cast, I can safely say that I would lose almost all interest in these movies — movies which are part of a world that I love dearly.
Thankfully, there’s already some evidence against this ever happening. In response to these reports, Maguire had this to say:
I have not met with del Toro. We don’t have any near future plans. I don’t know if something got misconstrued or miscommunicated but the source was not accurate at all.
Maguire made sure not to rule out and possibilities while he was at it.
I love Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson, and I certainly wouldn’t take myself out of the conversation…if I was part of it. But I haven’t read a script or talked to anybody about it.
Aggravating as it may be, this is how Hollywood works, and nothing we hear seems to ever be pure fact. As far as I’m concerned, Maguire could still be in the running for this role and they’re trying to cover up his woopsie; OR, he might have never been in the running at all. Until we get an official announcement, speculations just make things messy. Remember how many frakin’ names we heard for the role of The Joker in The Dark Knight? Yeah.
[Source: Heat Vision Blog]
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