Hollywood Tale
Peter Jackson had been developing Lord of the Rings at Miramax when one day he was called into a meeting where they informed him they…
Peter Jackson had been developing Lord of the Rings at Miramax when one day he was called into a meeting where they informed him they wanted to make it as one movie (Jackson had a treatment envisioning it as two films). Jackson was shocked and even more so when they told him that if he didn’t agree to do LOTR as one movie, they already had a writer-director lined up who would do it their way. Jackson asked if he could try to set up the movie elsewhere. Miramax gave him two weeks.
Jackson’s agents put out feelers, but the only meetings he could land were at Polygram / Working Title, which was in a management shift and couldn’t buy anything, and New Line — which means he had only one shot to salvage the project.
Jackson worked day and night pulling together the pitch and a huge array of drawings. When he met with Bob Shaye, the head of New Line, Jackson dove into his pitch head-first. He bounced around the room, flinging his arms about as he raced through the story he saw in his head, full of energy and passion, whipping out this drawing and then that, imitating orcs and hobbits, on and on for a full half-hour or more. Finally he stopped, sweat pouring from his every orifice, gasping for breath.
A long pause, then Shaye looked at Jackson and asked, “There are three books, aren’t there?”
Jackson nodded.
Shaye said, “Why not make three movies?”
And that’s how Lord of the Rings ended up as a trilogy at New Line.
Note: I heard this story from one of the movie’s producers at a special screening of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings and is accurate to the best of my recollection.
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