Alternate hobbit casting for LOTR?

[Tuor of Gondolin]

While I think PJ's hobbits, especially Bilbo and
Sam, were quite good, should PJ have gone in
other directions in hobbit casting? This occurred to me
when I thought (in another thread) about the 1988
movie Willow.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0096446/

Should PJ have used real dwarfs as hobbits? The cast
of Willow, especially Willow Upgood and his friend, seemed
good casting, and not nearly as much tricky filming by
PJ would have been required (mainly for Gimli).
Are there other possibilities for casting that could have
worked?

Another thought. In a Hobbit movie, what about the
Harry Potter good guy giant (Agrid?) as Beorn?

[narfforc]

Come on Downers lets kick start this thread, we all hope that the film will be made, so lets think about it. Here are some of my thoughts:


Bard.....................................Russell Crowe

Thranduil..............................Liam Neeson

Thorin..................................Brian Blessed

Beorn...................................Robbie Coltrane (the Agrid fellow)

The Master of Lake-Town....Timothy Spall

Balin.....................................Ray Winstone


So here are a few to think of:


The Dwarves

The Goblin-King

Dain Ironfoot

Galion the Butler

The Voice of Smaug...................John Hurt (Thanks Lalaith)

[Lalaith]

The voice of Smaug - John Hurt

[Tuor of Gondolin]

For what it's worth, this site has a bit of
information about a possible movie
(including the ever popular "petition"
to New Line to make The Hobbit).

http://derhobbit-film.de/indexengl.shtml

[The Saucepan Man]

There are some more casting ideas for the proposed Hobbit film here:

Cast the First Hobbit (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=10150&page=1)

[Mithalwen]

While that is fab casting Narfforc (and may I suggest that Galion would be a nice cameo for the wondrous Bill Nighy), I think it maybe isn't quite what Tuor meant.

Given the technological advances in the interim, I suppose that it was inevitable that the studio (and maybe directors) would go for standard size actors scaled down rather than short actors for the hobbit/dwarf roles, thus enabling bigger names to take such important roles for such an expensive film. But despite the wizardry I find a lot of the scenes with mixed scale actors a bit clunky and perhaps inevitably when the actors are interacting with a ball on a stick not each other, they often lack the naturalness of the scenes between Willow and Madmartigan.

Warwick Davis plays Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter films but is still only in his late thirties I think and so could easily have played one of the hobbits.

[Lalaith]

Oh yes, Bill Nighy as Galion, perfect.....I'm not arguing about Liam Neeson, but I also think the chap who plays Lucius Malfoy might be rather good as Thranduil.

[Mithalwen]

Yes - I have thought that for a while ... when I saw him in his Lucius role - I just htought "That's Leggy's Dad!!!" I think Neeson is a bit strapping for an elf... and Isaacs would do the hissy fits so well.