The director Peter Jackson came close to being replaced on The Lord of the Rings after an acrimonious meeting with the Hollywood powerbroker Harvey Weinstein in 1997, he has told a Sydney audience.
The co-founder of Miramax Films told Jackson he had Shakespeare in Love director John Madden ready as replacement if the New Zealander did not want to adapt Tolkien's novel into a single two-hour movie.
He also had a replacement scriptwriter and handed over a three-page outline showing how the novel could be compressed.
At the time, Jackson had been working for 18 months on a two-movie adaptation which would have cost about $US140 million ($177 million). Weinstein told Jackson and his wife and scriptwriting partner Fran Walsh that Miramax could not afford to make the movies under its $US75 million budget cap from parent company Disney.
"We just felt sick," said Jackson, who drank his first-ever glass of scotch after the meeting to settle his nerves. "We were literally trembling ... just so shattered and sort of emotional."
The horror..., the horror....
But remember, the next studio he pitched the project to [New Line] said "why not make this into three pictures?" Not everyone is as purely evil as the Weinsteins.
Read about it here.
Hat tip, bilious young fogey.
No comments:
Post a Comment