Were you ever in any doubt? Of course Sir Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis were going to sign on to The Hobbit.

Speaking to Theonering.net Del Toro confirmed the two thesps for the film. While he spoke of the second, as-of-yet untitled film, he didn’t give away any hints to the feature apart from that it will be a totally new invented story. Although we assume he will be drawing a great deal for Tolkiens extensive notes.

Del Toro was adament though he will be using a great deal of animatronics which will be inhanced by CGI, rather than just big lumps of jpegs.