Elijah Wood's Lord of the Rings concerns
Elijah Wood has concerns about new 'Lord of the Rings' movies and hopes those involved will respect the source material.
Elijah Wood has concerns about new 'Lord of the Rings' movies.
Although the 42-year-old actor - who portrayed Frodo Baggins in 'The Lord of the Rings' film trilogy and 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' - is generally supportive of new movies in the franchise, he admitted he hopes whoever makes the movies will have a passion for JRR Tolkien's books.
He told GQ: "I’m fascinated and I’m excited. I hope it’s good. I’m surprised—I don’t know why I’m surprised because, of course there would be more movies. Obviously at the core of that, is a desire to make a lot of money. It’s not that a bunch of executives are like, ‘Let’s make really awesome art.’ And, again, not begrudging anybody because, of course, it is commerce. But great art can come from commerce. So those two things are not mutually exclusive.
"But 'Lord of the Rings' didn’t come out of that place. It came out of a passion for these books. And I hope that that is ultimately what will drive everything forward with whatever these subsequent movies are. I just hope that it’s the same motivating factor at its core, whenever they hire a screenwriter and a filmmaker—that it is with reverence for Tolkien’s material and enthusiasm to explore it.”
Wood also revealed he still wanted to challenge himself after the success of 'Lord of the Rings' and he didn't want to get complacent.
He said: "I didn't want to rest on my laurels. I didn't want to simply take it easy. I knew that I couldn't take for granted that I would always have work, even though I was a part of something as big as 'Lord of the Rings'. The foolish decision would've been to be like, ‘It's cool, I got it.’ I was conscious of wanting to bridge the gap between having been an actor as a kid and being an adult actor and being considered for more adult roles.”