Cate Blanchett has become the first official cast member of Lord The Rings to be announced as reprising their role in Peter Jackson’s upcoming The Hobbit. Since Blanchett’s character of Galadriel doesn’t appear in J. R. R. Tolkien’s original book, we can assume that her scenes will be in the material that Jackson along with screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro developed for the films from Tolkien’s supplemental materials about the world of Middle Earth and some of the other events happening at the time of The Hobbit‘s narrative.
Blanchett will be joining the already announced cast members Martin Freeman as the titular hobbit Bilbo Baggins, Ken Stott as dwarf lord Balin and Mikael Persbrandt as the shape-shifting Beorn. Sylvester McCoy will appear as the wizard Radagast the Brown, another character from the book Lord Of The Rings that doesn’t appear in the book version of The Hobbit.
Ian McKellam and Andy Serkis, who played Gandalf and Gollum in Lord Of The Rings are also expected to return for the two-film adaptation, though no official announcement of their involvement has been made yet.
Filming on The Hobbit is set to begin next February in New Zealand with a December 2012 and 2013 release scheduled for the two installments.
