The Lord Of The Rings movie trilogy was a huge risk for Miramax. J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic books had long been deemed “unfilmable,” and the director who was pitching a movie version — Peter Jackson — was best known for a handful of low-budget gross-out horror movies and the mid-budget prestige piece Heavenly Creatures. He also wanted to film the adaptation in New Zealand, far from the movie industry’s center of power in Hollywood.
So Miramax held all the cards in the negotiations. Lord of the Rings was Jackson’s passion project. The studio was willing to take a gamble because they believed Jackson would make any compromise they suggested in order to get the films made. The way they saw it, Jackson needed Miramax more than Miramax needed Jackson.
In order to keep costs down, Miramax head Harvey Weinstein — who is currently in prison on sexual assault charges — wanted the three books adapted as one single movie. When Jackson baulked at that constraint, Weinstein issued an ultimatum: comply, or be replaced by Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino.
We’ll never know if the ultimatum was serious. Some say the next in line to direct The Lord of the Rings was Shakespeare In Love director John Madden. My theory is that Weinstein used Tarantino’s name specifically to scare Jackson into submission. Whether or not Tarantino would’ve done a good job, he sounds like a bad fit. Peter Jackson would not have wanted his baby handed over to someone mostly known at the time for for vulgar, self-aware crime dramas.
What would Quentin Tarantino’s The Lord of the Rings movies have been like?
It is a fascinating “what if” though. Would Quentin Tarantino’s version of The Lord of the Rings been any good. I usually don’t like to trash counterfactuals. If something didn’t come to pass, then it’s unnecessarily cynical to talk about how terrible it would’ve been. If pop icon Cher had played Star Trek’s villainous Borg queen, something that was actually considered, it may well have been awesome, so who are we say that Tarantino’s take on Lord of the Rings wouldn’t have been great?
But when it comes to Tarantino and franchise media, the things he himself has said do not bode well. Tarantino was once in talks to direct a Star Trek movie (all things return to Star Trek) and was even working on a script with Simon Pegg. When Pegg assured fans that it would not be “Pulp Fiction in space,” Tarantino almost immediately contradicted him, saying that it would, in fact, be “Pulp Fiction in space.”
While it’s possible Tarantino would have put aside his usual sensibility when dealing with existing IP, we have good reason to believe he would have stuck with his usual shtick. “Pulp Fiction in Middle-earth” may sound like a comically improbable worst-case scenario, but it may also have been exactly the bullet we dodged.
Perhaps my belief that Weinstein was bluffing is more like wishful thinking.
In the end, Weinstein’s ultimatum backfired. With relations between Jackson and Miramax souring, The Lord of the Rings was put into “turnaround,” meaning that Jackson was able to pitch the idea to other studios. New Line Cinema was more supportive of Jackson’s vision, and the rest is history.
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