How Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings nearly went very, very wrong

 Peter Jackson had found his way to The Lord of the Rings later than most, but he was immediately drawn in by Middle-earth and the rich world that JRR Tolkien created. As an aspiring young filmmaker, Jackson was perhaps influenced by The Lord of the Rings when making his own amateur fantasy movies – but would not revisit Middle-earth until nearly 20 years later.

Peter Jackson: I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 18. Loved the book. Thought it would make a great film. Assumed that somebody, one day, would make a live action film, and that I would get to go along and see it.

Ken Kamins (Jackson’s manager): Peter first mentioned Lord of the Rings after [his 1994 film] Heavenly Creatures was acquired by [Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s movie studio] Miramax. Part of that deal included Peter and [his wife and collaborator and fellow LOTR scriptwriter] Fran having a first look arrangement with Miramax, which meant that any idea that Peter and Fran had, they had to present to Miramax first.

Jack Lechner (executive vice president for production and development, Miramax Films): The script landed on my desk and I thought it was the most exciting thing I had ever encountered. I wrote a memo to Harvey and the other executives saying it had the potential to be the biggest movie any of us would ever be involved in.

Jackson found a surprising benefactor in Harvey Weinstein. The now-infamous film producer was an ardent fan of the books and was initially excited at the prospect of bringing them to the big screen, even if the idea of a fantasy blockbuster did not necessarily gel with Miramax’s established MO of relatively small movies with a high upside. However, as most filmmakers did, Jackson found working with Weinstein a significant challenge, with Harvey’s younger brother, Bob, a skeptic of the project from the start.

Lechner: [Harvey] could see what they could be. Bob was very, very sceptical of the whole thing. A couple of verbatim quotes I remember from Bob: “The villain’s an eye? Who’s going to be scared of an eye?”

Miramax ended up investing significantly in the preproduction of The Lord of the Rings and the scaling up of the still-burgeoning digital effects studio Wētā to handle the special effects.

Lechner: Bob began to get really nervous, and his nerves began to communicate to Harvey. They started being very concerned about the amount of money being spent in New Zealand for a movie that was going to be giant and unwieldy – and one they were going to have little control over. There’s a reason Harvey doesn’t do a lot of animation or musicals, and that’s because they have to be so minutely preplanned and he can’t do his thing, which is charge in like a bull in a china shop and remake it all.

Kamins: Harvey would go from being very empathetic and being Peter’s friend and partner and being, like, “We’re gonna figure this out,” but he would turn on a dime and go Mr Hyde and, all of a sudden, it was, like, “Don’t do this, don’t do that,” and get very threatening. There just came a moment where Harvey ultimately said, “You have to get this down to one movie and it cannot exceed two and a half hours in length.” Peter and Fran went, “We don’t know how to do that.” And Harvey said, “Well, let me make it simple. You know, if you don’t do that, we’re gonna kick you off the film. Quentin Tarantino is going to direct and Hossein Amini is going to write the script, and that’s just the way it is.” Peter and Fran were like, “We’ll be heartbroken, but you do what you’ve got to do, because we can’t do what you’re asking us to do.”