AH Challenge: Ruin the Lord of the Rings movies

John Fredrick Parker

Donor
Fiver said:
Best way to ruin the story is Jackson does not cut a deal with New Line Cinema. Miramax cuts the whole thing down to one movie.
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I don't know if this should just be a new thread by now or not, but I learned something interesting recently:

It’s 1998... Peter Jackson is summoned to a meeting with Miramax in New York. The studio has a great new idea: it’s going to make The Lord of the Rings as one film. They have a whole new approach to the story: The Mines of Moria? Skip them. Saruman? Gone. The Battle at Helm’s Deep? Gone. Gondor and Rohan? Merge them and make Boromir and Éowyn brother and sister. Maybe kill off some redundant hobbits.

I do have to mention here that Miramax wasn’t intentionally trying to be stupid. The problem was the budget. They had $75 million to spend on The Lord of the Rings and that was it. Given the choice between two low budget films or one with a modest budget, they chose the latter under the premise that it was most likely to make money.
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It was at this time* that Jackson decided to say "Screw it", and walked away -- he asked his agent to tell them he was out, and said agent managed to get the project sold to New Line Cinema. Had this sale not gone through, Miramax was planning to go ahead with this single feature film, and have it directed by John Madden, who was mainly known at the time for Shakespeare in Love (and somewhat for Mrs Brown).

Now I've got to wonder what that travesty would look like :eek:

*I am also told that Jackson had become generally disgusted with the Weinsteins overall, due to his growing friendship with Guillermo del Toro, who they had also screwed over -- but no need to get into that here...
 
Petike

Petike

John Fredrick Parker said:
It was at this time* that Jackson decided to say "Screw it", and walked away -- he asked his agent to tell them he was out, and said agent managed to get the project sold to New Line Cinema. Had this sale not gone through, Miramax was planning to go ahead with this single feature film, and have it directed by John Madden, who was mainly known at the time for Shakespeare in Love (and somewhat for Mrs Brown).

Now I've got to wonder what that travesty would look like :eek:
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*starts seriously contemplating TL idea* :D


Also, one way to ruin the LOTR films and their reputation completely is to go with the screenplay written by Boorman and Pallenberg for their unrealized 70s adaptation. The result would be an ink stain adaptation on the level of Lynch's/De Laurentis' Dune.
 
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