Interview: Elijah Wood on Bookworm, Fantasia, horror and a possible return to Middle Earth

Last Updated on August 4, 2024

The Fantasia Film Festival is in full swing in Montreal, and it kicked off in high gear with the world premiere of Bookworm. The movie – which we loved (read our review here) – stars the great Elijah Wood as an illusionist who is summoned to New Zealand to care for his estranged daughter after her mother winds up in a coma. Soon, the girl, Mildred (played by the terrific Nell Fisher), convinces her father to accompany her into the New Zealand wilderness to track down a mythical panther, only for the two to deal with danger at every turn.

Wood attended the film’s red carpet premiere and was kind enough to chat with us a bit. You can check out the interview embedded above, but Wood did give us an intriguing answer when we asked if he’d be willing to return to Middle Earth in Andy Serkis’s The Hunt for Gollum. 

“It would be pretty incredible. I have to say, any return to New Zealand to work with those individuals within the context of that world would be…jumping back into a world that’s so beloved and means so much to me. So yeah, it would be awesome.”

Viggo Mortensen also recently said he’d be willing to return, depending on the script. It should be noted that Wood also has been a long-time supporter of genre cinema, with his company, SpectreVision, responsible for some of the coolest indie horror films in recent years, such as A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Mandy (they’re also behind Oz Perkins’s The Monkey). I told Elijah that another film he made, The Greasy Strangler, has taken up permanent residency in my nightmares ever since I caught it at Sundance some years back, to which he said: 

“Oh, I LOVE The Greasy Strangler. You know, there’s actually a connection to this movie (Bookworm). Toby Harvard wrote The Greasy Strangler, and he’s the writer of this film, so there you go!”

While they may share the same writer, don’t expect the same gross-out vibe from the rather charming Bookworm when Vertical Entertainment releases it sometime in the next few months. Stay tuned for more from Elijah and Fantasia!