Harvey Weinstein Threatened to Give Lord of the Rings to Tarantino

Let’s be clear: if Hollywood mega-producer-turned-convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein had really fired Peter Jackson as director of Lord of the Rings and changed him with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Quentin Tarantino, it in all probability wouldn’t have cracked the Top 100 of probably the most monstrous issues the previous Miramax head has ever executed. But Weinstein did certainly threaten to take LotR away from Jackson and provides it to Tarantino if Jackson didn’t condense J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy right into a single, 150-minute film.

This truth comes from The Independent’s fantastic new oral history of the making of the movies, and took place as a result of Peter Jackson had a first-look take care of Miramax when he was creating the Lord of the Rings motion pictures. According to Jackson’s supervisor, Ken Kamins, Weinstein was initially down with Jackson’s plan to make a number of motion pictures however ran afoul with Disney:

“Harvey was excited. We found that very encouraging and thought we’d have room to tell the stories, only we weren’t paying attention to the political dynamic between Miramax and Disney. Disney had set a budget cap on Miramax and Lord of the Rings was well in excess of what they could greenlight on their own. When Disney realized the budget and that we were going to shoot the films back-to-back, and the director was not exactly an A-list name, they made it very clear they were not on board. So then begun the very tortured process of Harvey not wanting to admit to the Disney pushback and then at the same time saying to Peter, ‘This is what you have to do.’”

The outcome was Weinstein turning into an enormous, verbally abusive asshole, as he so often did, and demanding large adjustments to the challenge he’d beforehand authorized. Again, from Kamins:

“Bob Weinstein suggested at one point that we kill three of the Hobbits. Disney didn’t want [the adaptation] and the relationship between Peter and Miramax soured. Harvey would go from acting empathetically to turning on a dime into Mr. Hyde and would threaten Peter. He’d threaten to get Quentin Tarantino to direct if Peter couldn’t do it in one film that was two-and-a-half hours—which was the exact opposite of what he initially told us he wanted.”

God solely is aware of if Tarantino would have had any curiosity in making a Lord of the Rings film, or what it will have turned out like, however issues clearly labored out. Weinstein let Jackson store LotR to different studios, which nearly definitely had extra to do with Disney not eager to pay for an costly epic from a largely untested director. Thankfully, New Line Cinema took the deal, and even advised to Jackson that he flip his two-movie challenge right into a trilogy.

The complete oral historical past is well worth a read, and full of anecdotes from Ian McKellan, Elijah Wood, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom, and extra. My favourite is that this one about recognized badass Sir Christopher Lee, who reportedly served in England’s Special Operations Executive throughout World War II, a top-secret group whose missions included sabotage, creating resistance armies in occupied territories, and assassination. This unimaginable tidbit comes from actor Dominic Monaghan, who performed Merry within the motion pictures: “I watched him once take a pen and throw it at a tree and it stuck into the tree like a knife.”

I feel New Line Cinema producer Bob Ordesky describes him finest: “Christopher Lee was the best dinner guest you’ll ever have. His most boring story is somebody else’s best story.”

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