Bret McKenzie Lands A Part In 'The Hobbit'

Last week we told you that Bret McKenzie, of Flight of the Conchords, was possibly joining the cast of The Hobbit. At the time it seemed likely that he would be reprising his role from The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King, a super-minor elf. The fact that he had a role in either film came as a surprise to many, but given that he had a grand total of a few onscreen seconds in the entire saga, he's quite easy to miss.

But the casting report was only half right: he won't be reprising his role as the elf Figwit. Bret McKenzie will play a totally different elf, instead.

Variety announces that he'll be Lindir, and all but the most die-hard Tolkien scholars may have to dash to online sources to get more info about who that actually is.

We've already made that dash, and the LorR wiki says the elf is "a listener at one of Bilbo's poetry readings at Elrond's house [in Rivendell]. After Bilbo finished reciting the Song of Eärendil, he implied that he could not tell which parts were written by Aragorn and what parts were written by Bilbo. He may have been a minstrel or a musician."

Not much of a part, right? But Peter Jackson & Co. are expanding the scope of The Hobbit a bit, and we don't know just how that has been done. So it's possible that Lindir will represent a slightly larger role than Figwit would have been. Perhaps he'll even get several lines this time. The films shoot over the next year and change, and we don't even know when Bret McKenzie will go to work, but if we get any info on how long he's around the production, that will help predict his screen time, obviously.