According to the Noldar Blog, it seems that the casting call Saturday in Wellington, New Zealand got an unprecedented response. So extreme that local authorities had to shut it down after just an hour and a half due to to excessive traffic and car accidents. The call was to get people of various sizes to probably play extras in the Battle of Five Armies that will be filmed sometime in the next five months. It seems the production expected around 1200 to show up between the scheduled times of 1pm to 4pm but instead at least 3000 showed up with estimated 4500 bt the time it was over. All to a location that only has room for 150 people. Around 800 people made it through before the casting call was ended at 2:30pm. Not sure what will be done now but probably some online process to fill out whatever additional casting the production needs. More details on the day's events can be found here.

The Hobbit Casting Call Gets Overwhelming Response. There are any The Hobbit Casting Call Gets Overwhelming Response in here.