Peter Jackson Says The Beatles Wanted to Make a LORD OF THE RINGS Movie, But JRR Tolkien Denied Them the Rights
Director Peter Jackson has just released his three-part docuseries The Beatles: Get Back on Disney+, and as it turns out, Jackson has something in common with the Fab Four that he didn’t know before making the doc. Jackson’s most popular and award-winning work to date has been his film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, based on the books by JRR Tolkien, but decades before those beautiful films were made, The Beatles actually tried to get the rights to make their own version of the story for the big screen.
Jackson explained to the BBC (via Insider), that the band were sent copies of the Lord of The Rings books by their producer, Denis O'Dell, when they visited India in the late 60s.
"I expect because there are three, he sent one book to each of the Beatles. I don't think Ringo got one, but John, Paul, and George each got one 'Lord of The Rings' book to read in India. And they got excited about it," Jackson said.
However, Jackson said Tolkien, the author of the fantasy novels, was not enthusiastic about handing over big-screen rights to The Beatles.
"Ultimately, they couldn't get the rights from Tolkien, because he didn't like the idea of a pop group doing his story. So it got nixed by him. They tried to do it. There's no doubt about it. For a moment in time, they were seriously contemplating doing that at the beginning of 1968."
The BBC reports that if the film had made its way into production, the cast would have been composed of Paul McCartney as Frodo, John Lennon as Gollum, George Harrison as Gandalf, and Ringo Starr as Sam. And the band's choice of director was Stanley Kubrick, who at the time was best known for his work on Lolita, Spartacus, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Yeah, I can’t say this was a missed opportunity. The Beatles were great at making music, but their film efforts were pretty strange. Tolkien made the right choice, and the films that Jackson ended up making were perfectly crafted.
What do you think? Would you have liked to have seen The Lord of the Rings starring John, Paul, Ringo and George?