Watchmen's Matthew Goode to star as The Hobbit?

It will probably be a while longer before we hear official casting for Guillermo del Toro
and Peter Jackson's live-action adaptation(s) of Tolkien's THE HOBBIT. But we're sure whoever they select will be good. But will it be Goode?

WATCHMEN actor Matthew Goode has, at the very least, thrown his hat into the ring to play diminutive adventurer Bilbo Baggins, in his pre-Ian Holm days wandering Middle Earth.

In a Telegraph piece about Goode for his work in A SINGLE MAN, interviewer John Preston writes: "Now he’s a father, Goode doesn’t even like travelling that much. But just before we met, he’d auditioned for the role of Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro’s two-part film of THE HOBBIT. As he is the first to admit, he’s not an obvious choice – ‘Look at the size of me for Christ’s sake!’ If he got the part, he would, he says, find it almost impossible to refuse – despite the fact that it would involve him spending several months in New Zealand."

Unless the recent speculation to the contrary proves true, the first of the HOBBIT movies is due in theaters December 2011. Goode (also excellent in the underappreciated crime movie THE LOOKOUT) will next appear in Ricky Gervais' CEMETERY JUNCTION.