Harvey Weinstein Threatened to GiveLord of the Ringsto Quentin Tarantino

allow ’s be clear : if Hollywood mega - producer - work - convicted raper Harvey Weinstein had actually firedPeter Jacksonas conductor ofLord of the Ringsand replace him with Once Upon a fourth dimension in Hollywood’sQuentin Tarantino , it probably would n’t have cracked the Top 100 of the most monstrous things the former Miramax fountainhead has ever done . But Weinstein did indeed jeopardise to take LotR away from Jackson and give it to Tarantino if Jackson did n’t condenseJ.R.R. Tolkien ’s trilogy into a single , 150 - minute of arc movie .

This fact come up from The Independent ’s wonderfulnew unwritten historyof the devising of the films , and come about because Peter Jackson had a first - face deal with Miramax when he was developing the Lord of the Rings movies . According to Jackson ’s managing director , Ken Kamins , Weinstein was initially down with Jackson ’s plan to make multiple movies but ran afoul with Disney :

“ Harvey was delirious . We found that very encouraging and imagine we ’d have room to tell the stories , only we were n’t paying attention to the political moral force between Miramax and Disney . Disney had set a budget cap on Miramax and Lord of the Rings was well in overindulgence of what they could greenlight on their own . When Disney agnise the budget and that we were survive to shoot the films back - to - back , and the director was not exactly an A - tilt 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 meter saying to Peter , ‘ This is what you have to do . ’ ”

Peter Jackson holds aloft his Best Director Oscar for Return of the King at the 2004 Academy Awards.

Peter Jackson holds aloft his Best Director Oscar for Return of the King at the 2004 Academy Awards.Image: Frederick M. Brown (Getty Images)

The result was Weinstein turning into a huge , verbally opprobrious cocksucker , as he so often did , and demanding massive changes to the project he ’d antecedently approved . Again , from Kamins :

“ Bob Weinstein suggest at one degree thatwe belt down three of the Hobbits . Disney did n’t need [ the adjustment ] and the human relationship between Peter and Miramax acetify . Harvey would go from act empathetically to turning on a dime into Mr. Hyde and would peril Peter . He ’d imperil to get Quentin Tarantino to direct if Peter could n’t do it in one motion-picture show that was two - and - a - half hours — which was the exact reverse of what he initially told us he want . ”

God only knows if Tarantino would have had any interest in making a Lord of the Rings moving-picture show , or what it would have turn out like , but things obviously worked out . Weinstein let Jackson shop LotR to other studio , which almost certainly had more to do with Disney not want to give for an expensive epic from a largely untested director . gratefully , New Line Cinema assume the mess , and even suggested to Jackson that he deform his two - movie labor into a trilogy .

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The integral unwritten history iswell worth a read , and fill with anecdote from Ian McKellan , Elijah Wood , John Rhys - Davies , Orlando Bloom , and more . My ducky is this one aboutknown badass Sir Christopher Lee , who reportedly serve in England ’s Special Operations Executive during World War II , a top - mystic organization whose foreign mission included sabotage , creating resistance armies in occupied soil , and assassination . This unbelievable titbit amount from actor Dominic Monaghan , who play Merry in the movies : “ I watched him once take a pen and bewilder it at a tree and it puzzle into the tree like a knife . ”

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

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