David Tennant as THE HOBBIT's Bilbo Baggins?

I expect this rumor to be debunked mere hours from now, but it's too interesting for me to not share it. According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, Doctor Who star David Tennant could be set to take on the role of Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro's two films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

This strikes me as unlikely, for a number of reasons. Tennant makes a very poor match for Ian Holm, who played the older version of the character in the Lord of the Rings pictures. They're not just physically very different, they seem like very different personality types. Holm excels at sympathetic but conflicted and weak-willed characters, while Tennant tends to take on much more active, confident roles. This is an actor who played the Doctor and Casanova, after all. He's just not a "hobbit" guy. (Can you really picture him with those big, hairy, hobbit feet?)

There will allegedly be an announcement made at Comicon. We shall see...

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