Lee Pace, Dean O’Gorman Join The Hobbit

And good morning to you! Via his Facebook page, Peter Jackson announced that Lee Pace (Pushing Daisies) and Dean O’Gorman (the New Zealand series The Almighty Johnsons) have joined the cast of The Hobbit, playing the roles of Elven King Thranduil and Fili, respectively. The full announcement is after the jump (where you can still look at the top pic).

I’m very pleased to be welcoming two new cast members to our team.

Dean O’Gorman will be playing Fili. Dean’s a terrific Kiwi actor, who I am thrilled to be working with. He’s recently been in an excellent TV series down here called “The Almighty Johnsons”, and I should let fans of that show know that our shooting schedule allows Dean to continue with a second series next year. Dean will be joining us next week.

I’m also pleased to announce that Lee Pace will be playing the Elven King Thranduil. Casting these Tolkien stories is very difficult, especially the Elven characters, and Lee has always been our first choice for Thranduil. He’s going to be great. We loved his performance in a movie called “The Fall” a few years ago, and have been hoping to work with him since. When we were first discussing who would be right for Thranduil, Lee came into mind almost immediately.

It’s been a great week, and I’m looking forward to the next few. It’s going to be interesting…

More soon.

Cheers,
Peter J

O’Gorman will be replacing the recently departed Rob Kazinsky, who left the cast suddenly for “personal reasons.”

(Facebook)