| Smaugs voice is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things. Hell they could get a voice over guy like DiMaggio to do it, and it would be perfectly fine. I personally don't want Darth Vader's/CNN's voice though, or Ducan. Would like to see a person not so typecast doing it so we don't have any associations to other films/projects. That's part of what made LotR great. There weren't any actors other than Liv Tyler to throw you off of the experience.
The things I want to know about are in the 2nd film. del Toro has indicated there will be a lot of stuff not directly in the Hobbit, but part of it. He may very well get more into the "Necromancer" aka Sauron, The Rangers, even the Witch-King. It should really be interesting. And again, I think he's even better than Jackson for this project. The Hobbit and LotR are very dissimilar. After seeing Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy, and how he brings things to life through animatronics rather than relying heavily on CGI....He was made to direct this. | 