The “brain trust” behind The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the upcoming, live-action The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum would like Viggo Mortensen back as Aragorn for the movie.
Speaking to The Playlist in an upcoming interview, Philippa Boyens — who was one of the writers on the original Lord of the Rings live-action trilogy and worked with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh on the franchise as a whole — spoke about the upcoming live-action film and revealed that she, Jackson, and Walsh would love Viggo Mortensen to return if he’d be up for it.
“Honestly, that’s entirely going to be up to Viggo, collaboratively and we are at a very early stage,” Boyens said. “I’ve spoken to Viggo, Andy [Serkis] has spoken to him, Peter [Jackson] has spoken to him, we’ve all spoken to each other and honestly, I cannot imagine anyone else playing Aragorn, but it will be completely and entirely up to Viggo.”
The Hunt for Gollum wouldn’t use A.I. to de-age Mortensen
Boyens also briefly spoke about the movie, which takes place during The Fellowship of the Ring, right before Frodo leaves the Shire for Rivendell. The film will follow Aragorn as he’s tasked by Gandalf to find Gollum before he can share any sensitive information about the One Ring with anyone and have it get back to Sauron.
Despite Mortensen being older than he was during his time as Aragorn, Boyens said there would be no use of A.I. technology in de-aging him.
“I know Andy wants to work with him, but also, we don’t see this as like, using A.I. [technology], this is about a digital make-up, and whether Viggo does it or will entirely depends on how good the script is,” said Boyens. “And he doesn’t have a script yet. So to be fair to Viggo, let’s see if we write a good enough role and that he can find enough in it to see that it’s a performance he wants to take on. After that, it’ll be between Viggo and Andy of how that is achieved.”
Should Mortensen not want to reprise his role, Boyens said that they would still want him “heavily involved” in the project, but stressed that any decision on that front is still a few months away from having to be made.
“I suspect if he decides he doesn’t want to do it we would still want him to be heavily involved, like how do we hand this character off,” Boyens said. “But literally that decision is several, several months away. He’s got to read the script first and that’s exactly what I’m going to be working on when I get out of this interview [laughs].”
(Source: The Playlist)
