Busy Guillermo del Toro thrives under 'Strain'

He won't need to remind anyone of "The Hobbit's" origins. In nine months, he will begin shooting the film, and all he has to do is match the Tolkien achievement of Peter Jackson, the "Lord of the Rings" director whose three films pulled in more than $2.9 billion at the box office worldwide and collected 17 Oscars, including one for best picture and another for director. (Jackson is back as producer on "The Hobbit" and said last year that he "cannot think of a more inspired filmmaker to take the journey back to Middle-earth.")

Del Toro is in the midst of intense preproduction, doing work with models, script pages, set blueprints and, literally, thousands of detail decisions. Asked what he wants to accomplish and what he wants to avoid with the film, Del Toro said: "What I want to do is make the best movie I have ever done. What I want to avoid is to make some fastidious tracing of lines that were established by the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. We're trying to be respectful of it, and what was shown in the trilogy is canon, but we are gleefully exploring new creatures, new set pieces, new territory and new avenues. As with everything, there is always something new to get excited about."

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geoff.boucher@latimes.com