Hollywood Popular Artists

Jul 17th 2012, 14:15

There are few properties as closely associated with geek culture as the world of J.R.R. Tolkien and "Lord of the Rings," so naturally "The Hobbit" had to make a San Diego Comic-Con appearance ahead of its December bow.

Some of the cast members stopped by MTV News' space at Comic-Con to talk about returning to Middle-earth and bringing that world to the convention.

One of the newest cast members, Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin the dwarf, was happy to bring the fans what they love. "It's been awesome, and coming here today and seeing the way the fans are expecting the film, it's really exciting, because you see that expectation and the love for the books and the trilogy," he said. "So that's been great."

Gandalf the Grey—sorry, Ian McKellen couldn't tell much of a difference, filming "The Hobbit" as opposed to "Lord of the Rings." "Much of it is the same. If you've got 900 people working on the set one day, we'll probably know them all by sight, and you [Serkis] probably know everyone's name," he said. "I'm not as diligent as that, but the new people are the actors, so a lot of new actors, but they're not new to us because we've know them of old, from back home in the U.K. It feels very much the same but a little bit different. A little bit more streamlined."

Andy Serkis shared many of the same insights, expect that everyone seemed older. "We're all a little bit older, and there are more children about on set," he said. "The crew is fantastic. Literally, it is a bit of a time warp actually, isn't it? Because they're exactly the same people doing exactly the same jobs. Apart from that, the energy and the feel of it is pretty similar."

What was your favorite panel at Comic-Con? Let us know in the comments below and on Twitter!

Media files:
thehobbit.jpg (image/jpeg)