The Hobbit trilogy is finally complete, and we miss those pretty elves and dwarves already. Here’s where you can next spot your new and old faves now that their Middle-earth journey is done.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was released in cinemas this week, marking the end of Peter Jackson’s near-15 year reign over the world of J.R.R. Tolkien. The initial Lord of the Rings trilogy raised the bar in terms of a movie cast’s friendship having its very own fandom – they got matching tattoos, for God’s sake – and The Hobbit trilogy brought back a lot of our old favorites as well as adding plenty of new faces to Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth family. And now it’s time to say goodbye.
If you, like us, have developed an emotional attachment to the cast of The Hobbit and are already mourning the loss of them on your screen, here’s where you can next see 10 of The Hobbit’s brightest stars – and a little recommendation from their back catalogue to keep you going until all these new projects are released!
Warning: this piece contains spoilers for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
Sir Ian McKellen – Gandalf
Oh, Sir Ian. You international treasure, you. Ian McKellen’s next big project is Mr. Holmes, a crime drama directed by Bill Condon. McKellen will portray a long-retired 93 year old Sherlock Holmes, living in the country with his housekeeper (Laura Linney), keeping bees and dealing with the deterioration of his brilliant mind. Mr. Holmes is based on the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin and is due for release in 2015.
Sir Ian is also rumoured to be in talks to star alongside Chris Colfer in a Noel Coward biopic, and of course, Magneto may return in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Until then, check out his Oscar-nominated role in Gods and Monsters, or his version of Shakespeare’s Richard III – a role that Hobbit co-star Martin Freeman also took on earlier this year. For something a bit lighter, try Vicious, his snarky sitcom about an old gay couple.
Martin Freeman – Bilbo
Our Hobbit himself has a few things lined up for the near-future. In early 2015, he’ll star in The Eichmann Show, a BBC drama about the televising of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, and he’s also loosely attached to two interesting projects: Funny Cow, about the world of stand-up comedy, and The Taliban Shuffle, Tina Fey’s film based on a war journalist’s memoirs.
Obviously the news that we all want to hear about is Sherlock, but things are elusive as ever from that camp. The most recent update we have there is a picture of Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in book-canon-appropriate clothes for a special not due for release until next Christmas, with the show’s fourth season most likely to air in 2016. If you want a bit of Martin Freeman in your stocking this holiday, pick up Love Actually or his lesser known Christmas flick, Nativity!.
Richard Armitage – Thorin
Richard Armitage as Thorin is arguably The Hobbit trilogy’s most impressive performance – he brought depth and honor to a character who, in the book, is stubborn, vain, and pretty much just driven by a desire for gold and treasure. Thorin in the movies is rather inspirational, but we’d expect nothing less from Armitage, whose reputation on stage and screen in the UK precedes him.
If you’re keen to follow his career, Armitage is currently filming Sleepwalker, a psychological thriller in which he plays a sleep researcher, and has completed a role as an ex-social worker in Urban and the Shed Crew, an adaptation of a non-fiction book about runaway children, gangs and inner city wastelands in Northern England. You’ll also be able to see his acclaimed 2014 stage performance in The Crucible at selected cinemas from February. If you’re harbouring a desire to watch Armitage being noble and waving a sword around some more, you can’t go wrong with the 2006 Robin Hood TV series in which he played antagonist/antihero Guy of Gisborne.
Aidan Turner – Kili
If watching “the sexy dwarf” Aidan Turner fall in love with an elf in The Hobbit gave you a slight inkling that he may be the new love of your life, let alone Tauriel’s, never fear. 2015 will see Turner take the leading role in Poldark, a TV series about a British officer returning home from the American Revolutionary War to find that his fiancee has casually married someone else.
If you need more of him right now, do yourself a favor and watch him star alongside Russell Tovey in the first three seasons of the horrendously underrated BBC supernatural drama Being Human. If funny, clever period drama is more your thing, seek out Desperate Romantics, in which Turner plays Pre-Raphaelite painter and terrible decision-maker Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Dean O’Gorman – Fili
There’s a reason why Peter Jackson cast two young, gorgeous and enigmatic actors to play Thorin’s little nephews when the rest of the dwarf company look like garden gnomes. It’s so you’d have all the feels when they both die tragically. Dean O’Gorman, a native New Zealander, was somewhat of an unknown to Hollywood before being cast in The Hobbit, but he’s clearly doing something right – he’s set to appear as Kirk Douglas in Trumbo, alongside the likes of Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren.
Trumbo is a biographical drama about Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter of Spartacus and Roman Holiday, and a victim of the Hollywood blacklisting era. It’ll be released in 2015, and it sounds like Oscar-bait already. If you want to check out O’Gorman’s earlier work, try The Almighty Johnsons, a New Zealand fantasy-drama about reincarnated Norse gods which also aired on SyFy.
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