Exclusive

Will The Hobbit Be Even Bigger Than The Lord of the Rings? Here's What Elijah Wood Says...

Exclusive! Frodo Baggins talks upcoming LOTR prequel flicks: "They're gonna be big"

By Marc Malkin, Brett Malec Nov 15, 2011 2:10 PMTags
Elijah WoodJason Merritt/Getty Images

It's hard to imagine any movies making as much box-office bank as Peter Jackson's blockbuster The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The three films grossed almost $3 billion worldwide!

But now that production is well underway on Jackson's upcoming Rings prequels, does series star Elijah Wood think The Hobbit films have what it takes to outshine LOTR's moneymaking glory?

"I don't even know if they're meaning to outdo them," Wood told us at Sunday's Happy Feet Two premiere in Hollywood of the upcoming two Hobbit flicks. "They're gonna be big. The audience is huge. The anticipation for The Hobbit has been so massive for so long."

Following some controversy surrounding Jackson's telling of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Wood explained how his character Frodo Baggins, along with Cate Blanchett's elven queen and Orlando Bloom's Legolas, are written into the film.

"The idea is that there are things actually happening historically at the same time the story of The Hobbit is taking place, they just weren't written in The Hobbit," he said. "They were written in appendices and external pieces...that's kind of where a lot of that is coming from."

"It's going to feel like a nice transitional piece," he said. "I think it's going to be a great amalgam of a fresh new approach with places we've never been before in Middle-earth mixed with things that are very familiar to us. It will be a beautiful transition. I'm excited about it. I can't wait."