John Lennon as Gollum? A steamy romance between Frodo and Galadriel? It all could
have happened — but you'll never get to see it.
J.R.R. Tolkien's vast and beloved legendarium has been portrayed on
screen many times over the years. Long before the first successful attempt came to fruition,
however, many others had tried their hands at adapting Middle-earth for the movies.
But what did Tolkien himself think about all this? Well, In 1968,
The Telegraph published an interview with the author, in which he expanded on his
views regarding the rights to adapt his world for the screen. As it turned out,
Tolkien had been solicited countless times by people hoping to put the Middle-earth stamp on
everything from movies and TV shows to puzzles and soaps. But his fans at the time weren't
exactly supportive of these ideas — the article cites one 17-year-old fan, who wrote to Tolkien:
"Don't let them make a movie out of your Ring. It would be
like putting Disneyland into the Grand Canyon."
For his part, it seems that Tolkien agreed,
albeit for slightly different reasons. He told The Telegraph:
"You can't cramp narrative into dramatic form. It
would be easier to film The Odyssey. Much less happens in it. Only a few storms."
"To all who come to this happy place, welcome!"
Nowadays, it seems like nearly every major movie and television franchise in existence
falls under the jurisdiction of the House of Mouse. Everything from the Marvel Cinematic
Universe to the Star Wars galaxy to the Muppets is owned and controlled by Disney — and there
was a very brief period in which the company considered staking a claim in Middle-earth.
In 1938, just a year after The Hobbit was released, a Disney animator suggested combining
elements of the novel with Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle of musical dramas for a segment
in the animated movie Fantasia. Disney also tried and failed to produce a film of The Hobbit during
the 1950s. Disney animator Wolfgang Reitherman once claimed that Disney even considered adapting
The Lord of the Rings, but decided it was too "long and unwieldy" for the big screen.
This may have been for the best, however, because Tolkien truly detested Disney. In one of his
letters, written in 1937, the author claimed he "loathed" the studio and insisted that any
illustrations for an American publication of The Hobbit not be influenced by Disney's animations.
Tolkien echoed these sentiments in a later letter, written in 1968, in which he wrote:
"I recognize [Disney's] talent, but it has always seemed to me hopelessly corrupted.
Though in most of the 'pictures' proceeding from his studios there are
admirable or charming passages, the effect of all of them to me is disgusting."
Tolkien's first positive response to an attempted Hollywood adaptation
of The Lord of the Rings came in 1957. That year, American sci-fi
editor Forrest J. Ackerman and producer Al Brodax teamed up with writer Morton Grady
Zimmerman to approach the author with their idea for an animated Middle-earth movie.
Tolkien was initially impressed by their illustrations, which he noted to be in
the style of celebrated literary illustrator Arthur Rackham. He was
less impressed by the proposed storyline, however, which featured what he called a
"general degradation" of the story. Nevertheless, the rights were optioned to Team Ackerman,
partly because Tolkien believed he could acquire an author's veto on anything he didn't like.
Soon after, Zimmerman sent Tolkien a detailed treatment of his Lord of the Rings story.
Tolkien's response, written to Ackerman in a letter, was anything but approving. Mostly,
he complained about Zimmerman's rampant carelessness with the
narrative. But Tolkien's greatest criticism had to do with the tone,
which he believed was too action-heavy and failed to accurately represent the "heart of the tale."
In the end, the Ackerman project died a pitiful death: the project
was shut down after failing to fund his request for an extension to the rights.
The whole world was gripped by Beatlemania in the 1960s. Perhaps inevitably,
the runaway success of the Fab Four's music was accompanied by a number of live-action films,
including A Hard Day's Night and Help! It was during this
period that The Beatles attempted to get a Lord of the Rings movie off the ground.
John Lennon in particular was a fan of Tolkien, and believed that he and his
bandmates could very well star in the picture: Lennon as Gollum, Paul McCartney as Frodo,
George Harrison as Gandalf, and Ringo Starr as Sam. They even approached Stanley Kubrick,
who had just directed 1964's Dr. Strangelove, to helm the project.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here — this is the war room!"
Sadly, it wasn't to be. For one thing, Kubrick wasn't interested. But it appears that Tolkien
himself drove the final nail into The Beatles' coffin. In 2021, Peter Jackson told the BBC
that the author himself had refused the Fab Four permission to make their movie. Jackson claimed:
"He didn't like the idea of a pop group doing his story."
The director added:
"What would The Beatles have done with a Lord of the Rings soundtrack album? That would
have been 14 or 15 Beatles songs that would have been pretty incredible to listen to."
In 1969, United Artists acquired the film rights to The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien was 77 years old by that point, and had decided that he would not live to see
his novel appear on screen. As such, he didn't particularly care who ended up with the rights.
A few years later, United Artists hired director John Boorman to helm a live-action
adaptation of the novel. Boorman would later become renowned for movies such as Deliverance
and Hope and Glory, but at that time he had directed just a handful of features.
Screenwriter Rospo Pallenberg worked with Boorman to figure out how best to bring
Middle-earth to life on the silver screen. He ended up writing a 176-page script for their
movie. The details of the screenplay range from fascinating to mortifying:
it featured a Kabuki-style theatrical performance of Middle-earth's history,
a love scene for Frodo and Galadriel, and a battle of words fought between Gandalf and Saruman.
Boorman's film was destined to fail, however. United Artists ran out of money after a number
of commercial setbacks, finally deciding not to move forward with the project. The good news,
though, is that the script still exists online — just in case you
want to better imagine a movie in which Aragorn and Boromir passionately kiss,
beekeepers defend the walls of Minas Tirith, and Merry blinds a horse with a frying pan.
The title of Ralph Bakshi's animated Middle-earth movie,
The Lord of the Rings, is something of a misnomer,
as it only tells the story of The Fellowship of the Ring and certain aspects of The Two Towers.
"Gandalf! Beyond all hope, Gandalf!"
Upon its release in 1978, The Lord of the Rings was a considerable financial success,
earning $30 million worldwide off an estimated $4 million
budget. But it was met with poor reviews from fans, who were not pleased at all with what
they considered to be subpar visuals and the fact that the movie ended halfway through the story.
Part 2 of Bakshi's tale was greenlit for release in 1980. Initially,
the film's creators were optimistic, but a sequel to The Lord of the Rings
simply never materialized. Screenwriter Peter S. Beagle later recalled that it
all came down to creative differences between Bakshi and producer Saul Zaentz.
Bakshi in particular believed that the first movie simply hadn't been as good as it could have been.
In 1980, the production company Rankin/Bass, which had made 1977's animated Hobbit movie,
released The Return of the King as an ABC television special. While this had nothing
to do with Bakshi's half-completed project, the story does pick up around the same point that
The Lord of the Rings ended, providing fans with a kind of unofficial conclusion to the 1978 movie.
In the early 1990s. Russian director Roman Mitrofanov set out to bring an animated
adaptation of The Hobbit to life, but the project fell apart when the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991.
Here's the fun part, though: the movie's six-minute prologue, depicting the fall
of Erebor and Dale, still exists online. The sequence opens on a party in Dale,
in which the townsfolk cavort and dance in the square. Enter Smaug, who destroys Dale
and takes Erebor for his own. As the snow falls, the scene cuts to a meeting of the dwarves and
Gandalf, who suggests they hire a burglar to accompany them on their quest for vengeance.
You'll probably know all this, of course, if you've already seen or read The Hobbit.
But the Mitrofanov prologue features a couple of interesting quirks, not seen in the novel,
that Peter Jackson appears to have referenced in his movies. For example,
the people of Dale fly dragon kites, just like they do in An Unexpected Journey.
And while the animated Erebor looks much different to Jackson's version,
the sight of Dale covered by snow will look all too familiar to fans of the latter.
"Now it is a ruin… the Desolation of Smaug."
You can only imagine how the Hobbit movies might
have looked if Mitrofanov had finished his adaptation.
A 2021 essay written for Polygon by film critic Drew McWeeny tells the story of
the war between Jackson and disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein over the Lord
of the Rings movies. Having worked with Jackson on many of his previous films,
Weinstein acquired the rights to The Lord of the Rings from Saul Zaentz and hired the director
and his screenwriting partners, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, to make it a reality.
The first outline Jackson and Walsh prepared for Miramax, Weinstein's company, told a story
across two pictures: The Fellowship of the Ring and The War of the Ring. McWeeny writes that the
original scripts felt like watching the final movies at 1.5 times the speed — many characters
get little development, the Shire scenes are short, and the elves are met only briefly.
Weinstein wasn't exactly cooperative during pre-production,
and eventually restricted Jackson to a measly $75 million budget. So Jackson
and Walsh decided on a desperate gamble to save their movie: they leaked the
script for their project to McWeeny, who then reviewed it on Ain't It Cool News.
Weinstein pushed Jackson even further after that, demanding The Lord of the Rings become
one four-hour film. Jackson refused and Weinstein conceded, giving up the movie on the condition
that Miramax be repaid everything that had already been spent on development. Luckily,
New Line execs Bob Shaye and Michael De Luca rode in to save the day, committing
to the project and insisting on three Lord of the Rings movies. The rest, as they say, is history.
"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."
In 2008, J.R.R. Tolkien and Guillermo del Toro fans alike were overjoyed to learn that
the acclaimed fantasy/horror director had been hired to helm New Line Cinema's Hobbit movies.
They were somewhat less overjoyed to learn, two years later, that del Toro had left the project,
citing production delays and other commitments as the reasons for his departure. For better
or for worse, the Hobbit trilogy would eventually be directed by Peter Jackson.
So how would Del Toro's Middle-earth saga have played out? Well, for one thing, it was intended
to take place over the course of two movies rather than three: An Unexpected Journey and There and
Back Again. In 2011, New Yorker writer Daniel Zalewski visited del Toro's home and got a glimpse
at how the films may have looked. He described seeing a sketch of Smaug the dragon that resembled
a "flying axe" and drawings of other new monsters, such as an armor-plated troll that could curl up
into a ball. Del Toro also elaborated on making Middle-earth look like a psychedelic painting,
rather than the realistic New Zealand landscapes that Peter Jackson eventually utilized.
Of course, it's impossible to say whether Del Toro's Hobbit movies would have been
any better or worse than Jackson's,
but one thing is for sure: they clearly would have made for one heck of a trip.