Slash Film came across an interesting interview at Salon.com dating back to October 2006. The interview is from May 2006 when the Salon reporter Andrew O'Hehir spoke with Guillermo del Toro about Pan's Labyrinth. The back-and-forth went like this:

I couldn't help thinking of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis in this film. Were you a fan of those books?

I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff.

C.S. Lewis was another thing. I really enjoyed him as a kid, but he's too Catholic for me. It's not something as an adult I can feel comfortable relating to.

Considering Del Toro is set to direct The Hobbit and its sequel over the course of the next four years it's rather interesting eh? Of course, people can change their minds and opinions and that is why I changed the headline from originally being "Doesn't Like Hobbits" to "Didn't Like Hobbits". Especially after a bit of searching I found an interview at Entertainment Weekly from December 2007 with Del Toro in which he talks a little more about Tolkien's novels:

You know, I think I've been abroad too long. I've heard some rumblings, but nothing official. I don't want to think about it because it's such an eventuality. It's the only Tolkien book I read. I tried my best to read "Lord of the Rings," the trilogy. I could not. I could not. They were very dense. And then one day, I bought "The Hobbit." I read it and I loved it. So it would be a privilege. But listen, I wish I knew. At this stage, after Hellboy II, I'm unemployed.

Reading the rest of that EW article it seems Del Toro may actually be more excited to have the WETA tools and Peter Jackson at his disposal. He seems pretty jazzed about it referring to Jackson's New Zealand digs saying, "it’s Hollywood the way God intended it… So it's heaven."

Well, it looks like Del Toro is going to heaven and it may be with a story he now "loves" but his imagination and that story do seem like a match made in heaven. Also, just to clarify, I agree with him 100-percent on the Tolkien novels. I couldn't read more than a couple chapters of "Lord of the Rings," but I loved "The Hobbit."

I am curious… Do the comments Del Toro made 2 years ago about actually hating things such as "dragons" and "hobbits" bother any of you and make you think he is unfit to direct the two "Hobbit" films?

Related post categories: Movie News : Guillermo del Toro, The Hobbit

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