The Lord of the Rings: Chaos Behind The Scenes As Weinsteins Tried To Remove Jackson & Rewrite The Fellowship
The Lord of the Rings nearly collapsed before it began—Peter Jackson was almost fired and key Hobbits cut. Find out how the epic was saved just in time.
Lord Rings Jackson Weinsteins Clash(Photo Credit –Wikimedia)
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The Lord of the Rings nearly lost its magic before it ever hit theaters, and it had nothing to do with Orcs. At one point, the Weinsteins wanted to fire Peter Jackson, shrink the trilogy into one film, and kill off three Hobbits.
Back in the early development stages, The Lord of the Rings was a Miramax project. Peter Jackson had signed a first-look deal with the studio. Harvey Weinstein, at first, seemed thrilled. “Harvey was excited,” Jackson’s manager Ken Kamins told The Independent. “We found that very encouraging and thought we’d have room to tell the stories.”
But trouble started brewing fast. The Disney-owned Miramax wasn’t ready to gamble on a sprawling fantasy epic. Disney had capped budgets, and Lord of the Rings was way over their limit. “When Disney realized the budget and that we were going to shoot the films back-to-back, and the director was not exactly an A-list name, they made it very clear they were not on board,” Kamins said during the same interview.
That pushback led to chaos. Harvey Weinstein, caught between Disney’s refusal and his earlier promises to Jackson, shifted tone quickly.
And what he had to do was wild. According to Kamins, Bob Weinstein once floated the idea of killing off three of the Hobbits. That wasn’t all. The Weinsteins wanted the entire trilogy condensed into a single two-and-a-half-hour film. If Jackson didn’t play along, he was out. Kamins said Harvey would threaten to bring in Quentin Tarantino to direct if Jackson couldn’t make it work in one film, completely flipping on what he had originally promised.
With the project on the verge of collapse, Kamins pushed for an escape plan. He asked Harvey for a window to shop the project elsewhere. The usual time frame? Six to twelve months. Harvey only allowed them three weeks. And he didn’t make it cheap. Kamins said Weinstein demanded a $12 million advance to cover what Miramax had spent, five percent of the total gross, and a credit as executive producer.
It was a tight window, but Jackson and his team pulled it off. They moved the trilogy to New Line Cinema, which famously backed the idea of three films instead of one.
What followed was cinematic history. The Lord of the Rings trilogy raked in nearly $3 billion at the global box office, snagged Oscars, and built one of the most iconic franchises in film history. But none of it would have existed if the Weinsteins had their way.
So yes, Middle-earth almost had fewer Hobbits, no Jackson, and probably no heart. The Lord of the Rings was nearly the fantasy epic that never was.
