Peter Jackson Was Almost Fired and Replaced With Quentin Tarantino on THE LORD OF THE RINGS By Harvey Weinstein
A fascinating bit of information has been revealed regarding Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings in a new book detailing the director's journey of making the movie. The book reveals that at one point disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein threatened to fire Jackson and replace him with Quentin Tarantino on the project!
The book is called Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth, by Ian Nathan and in it, we learn that Weinstein hated the idea of breaking the film up into three films. He wanted that whole epic story to be condensed into one movie and the producer threatened to fire Jackson if he didn't do that.
Thanks to The Stuff, we have an excerpt from the book that reads:
"Harvey was like, 'you’re either doing this or you’re not. You’re out'. And I got Quentin ready to direct it'," Ken Kamins, a fellow producer called in by Weinstein to assist on the project, told Nathan.
Jackson himself recalled receiving a memo dated June 17, 1998 from the Miramax (the Weinstein’s production company) development head Jack Lechner at his New York hotel, which detailed what Nathan describes in the book as "a more radical, streamlined approach", which would enable the story to be told in a single movie. Helm’s Deep would be cut, Eowyn would replace Faramir as Boromir’s sister, the Balrog would disappear and even Saruman’s fate was in the balance.
In the book, Jackson went on to say, "It was literally guaranteed to disappoint every single person that has read that book." Thankfully Jackson won in the end. The Weinstein's ended sold the Lord of the Rings rights to New Line Cinema, who trusted Jackson's vision of the film and we got one of the greatest film trilogies ever made.
Luckily everything worked out for Jackson in the end, but, I can't help but wonder what a Lord of the Rings movie would have been like had Quentin Tarantino directed it! That would have been interesting.
Via: /Film