Actually what he said was a friend of his got their Gandalf early and she was reporting the head to be HT style.
I didn't catch that line, the post I saw was just if it's true....., that'd be great.
Really, I don't see any reason they couldn't do buck heads in the same style, Hot Toys still has necked figures made of skintone casting, and their adapter is similar to Sideshow.
My guess is that his beard may have been a driving factor, soft beard to flex a big and make the figure more poseable. That was one concern I had when the proto debuted and it was a Buck head.