Hugo Weaving doesn’t want to play Elrond again new Lord of the Rings show

A couple of actors from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies have said they’d be down for a cameo in Amazon’s new show, but not this one:

With Amazon Prime currently undertaking the huge task of making a TV show inspired by J.R.R Tolkien’s iconic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings, there’s been a lot of talk about whether actors from Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy could return. The new show is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, long before Frodo and Sam and friends were even born, but in theory, elven characters could show up, since they’re basically immortal and many were around back then. For example, what about Elrond, the elf who ran Rivendell, the last homely house east of the sea?

Unfortunately, actor Weaving himself isn’t on board for that. “No way,” he told Variety when asked if he would consider coming back. “Absolutely no.”

Weaving is no stranger to huge, big-budget movies. In addition to playing Elrond in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies (which together grossed over $6 billion worldwide), he also played Agent Smith in The Matrix, Red Skull in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as ‘V’ in V for Vendetta.

But the way he tells it, returning for the upcoming fourth Matrix movie was more likely that him going back to Middle-earth. “Matrix might have happened. But Lord of the Rings, no, I would never — I’m not interested in that at all. Look, I loved being in New Zealand with all those great people, and it was like going back to a family but actually, to be honest, I think everyone had more than enough of it.”

Speaking of The Matrix 4, apparently director Lana Wachowski was interested in bringing him back. “Lana was very keen for me to be a part of [The Matrix 4],” he told Collider. “I really wanted to because I’m very, very fond of all of them. I had some initial reticence about the idea of going back to revisit The Matrix, after having already done three films, but then I read the script and got an offer to my agent.”

Unfortunately, when negotiations took place, the dates didn’t work out. “Lana decided that she didn’t wanna change her dates,” Weaving explained, “so I couldn’t do it. In a nutshell, that’s what happened.”

Honestly, I’m disappointed that we won’t be seeing Weaving in either of these iconic roles again; everyone likes a blast from the past. Sure, Agent Smith technically died in the final Matrix movie, but so did Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and they’re both back.

There are other actors who would be to return. Elijah Wood, who played Frodo, is down for a cameo, although again, that’d be hard since the story takes place way before Frodo’s time. And the elf Galadriel actually will be in the show, but played by Morfydd Clark rather than Cate Blanchett. We’ve even heard that Elrond will show up, but we don’t know who might play him. Not Weaving, obviously.

So we won’t see Hugo Weaving reprise his famous roles anytime soon, but that’s not to say he doesn’t have any upcoming projects. He’s currently promoting his new movie, Measure for Measure.

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