Richard Armitage stands at the eye of the storm in New Line Cinema's tornado-disaster thriller, “Into the Storm.” The British actor who gained international attention as “The Hobbit Trilogy”’s Dwarven warrior Thorin Oakenshield, literally flew to Michigan directly from the Trilogy’s set in Wellington, New Zealand to shoot the twister film. “Yes, I came straight from The Hobbit movies to do this—the flight was my break,” Armitage laughs.
“It’s difficult to prepare for a film like this,” Armitage says. “Even after studying the script and doing your work, you walk on set and run into an unpredictable set of circumstances. The tornadoes in this film are extreme and the way they are creating the effects is extreme too. Just trying to stay on your feet and keep your eyes open isn’t easy. But I like that! I like walking into a scene thinking it’s going to be one thing and then seeing how it gets turned on its head. It becomes a bit of an endurance test, which is great.”