The Lord Of The Rings trilogy films of the 2000s won fans’ hearts across the globe. While the story was already popular among readers of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy adventure books, the films introduced the epic Middle Earth saga to millions more.
They also made director Peter Jackson and lead actor Elijah Wood, household names. However, many are unaware that at a point, the trilogy’s visionary director had almost been cut out of the project. The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was almost doomed when Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax held its film rights.
Harvey Weinstein Continually Threatened to Fire The Lord Of The Rings Director
The Lord Of The Rings’ Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson and disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein’s vision for the epic fantasy saga’s big-screen adaptation could not be more different. The director was rallying for the story to be adapted as a trilogy while the latter wanted to condense the extraordinary epic into one film.
In a 2021 interview with The Independent, Jackson’s manager revealed that Harvey Weinstein had repeatedly threatened to replace Jackson with Quentin Tarantino. The threats were meant to assuage the director to compress the project’s runtime. The imprisoned producer wanted the monumental story to be told in just one two-and-a-half hours film.
Jackson’s manager said,
“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.”
As a result of Weinstein’s constant pushback, Jackson and his team began looking for other studios, and the trilogy was saved when they met with Bob Shaye at New Line Cinema. However, the director made sure to rub it into Weinstein, after securing the trilogy deal. The filmmaker who rejected the most successful DCU movie ever, dedicated a special prop in The Lord Of The Rings to the short-sighted former owner of Miramax.
Peter Jackson’s Alleged “F**k You” Move Against Weinstein Is Simply Hilarious
The Lord Of The Rings lead actor Elijah Wood appeared on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2021 and shared how Peter Jackson had allegedly trolled Weinstein in the fantasy films.
The actor alleged that one of the orc masks in the film was designed after Harvey Weinstein’s face. Wood recalled an episode of The Friendship Onion podcast on which his The Lord Of The Rings co-star Sean Astin claimed to have seen an orc mask looking strikingly similar to Weinstein on-set.
Elijah Wood said,
“They were talking to Sean Astin about his first memory of getting to New Zealand. He had seen these Orc masks. And one of the Orc masks — and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a f**k you.”
The 43-year-old actor also said,
“I think that is okay to talk about now; the guy is f**king incarcerated,” the star continued. “F**k him.”
Besides the iconic The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit films, Peter Jackson has also directed 1996’s The Frighteners, 2005’s King Kong, and 2009’s The Lovely Bones.
The Lord Of The Rings is available for streaming on Max and Prime Video.
