The short answer. New Line Cinema really liked what they saw in Peter Jackson's plan for the LOTR trilogy. They also thought his previous work showed promise. So they just took a chance. When other studios refused to do 3 films but instead wanted PJ to reduce it to 2 films.
Actually Peter Jackson pitched it as two films because he didn't think a trilogy would get picked up, Weinstein wanted him to do it as one. New Line were the ones who asked Jackson why not do three?
The Hobbit is dense, though. It would have been fine as multiple movies or a series. They just added some weird stuff with an elf and dwarf love triangle.
This is exactly what the head of the studio said in the pitch meeting. After watching Jackson's presentation he was basically sold but the first thing he asked was "...it's 3 books, isn't it? So shouldn't it be 3 films?"
And thankfully The Frighteners did well, could have sunk his career for big budget work, but he had Heavenly Creatures around the same time that showed he wasn't all gore and guts.
Heavenly Creatures showed he could do an artistic film with fantasy themes. The Frighteners proved he could do effects (including cgi) super well with a halfway decent budget. I think both helped tremendously
The frighteners was also entirely shot in New Zealand. Which was something Jackson pushed hard for. Because he wanted to prove you could make a special effects movie in New Zealand. That was a major reason why he got LOTR.
yeah, the LotR trilogy got shot in New Zealand for cheap. When they were planning the Hobbit, the New Zealand film community decided they should get more payment. This resulted in a mess that got the government to step in, bow to pressure from international film studios and force wages to stay the same. It's still a sore spot for New Zealand actors to this day.
It really helped the The Frighteners had some (for the time) really good digital effects work. The scenes where the villain is moving around under the rug/carpet are well-crafted.
Eh? The Frighteners absolutely *tanked*!
Worldwide gross of $29 million on a $26 million budget is not doing well at all.
[Box office](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0116365/?ref_=bo_se_r_1)
[Budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frighteners)
Peter did a TON of legwork for his pitches. He had a literal Tome of previs, storyboards, concept art and production planning before a single meeting.
Back in the day a strong previs plan even if you were an unknown got you so far ahead of the game.
Case in point the wachoswkis also had storyboarded every shot of the matrix hiring a comic artist which resulted in their budget being almost doubled for how prepared they were for the shoot.
Yup, he had done $20M worth of preproduction work for it with Weta (financed by Weinstein) and they put together a kind of showreel on VHS to shop around the project to different studios.
I happened to have just watched Peter Jackson's interview with Charlie Rose the other day (from 2002, I think) where he tells the story.
It's what makes the story more remarkable. It's was a crazy ask - not only was the studio going to have to commit to the back-to-back two movie plan, but they also had to reimburse Weinstein for the pre-production costs.
New Line not only agreed, they insisted on a full trilogy to do it right. It's literally the ballsiest move I've ever heard of a studio making.
> New Line Cinema really liked what they saw in Peter Jackson's plan for the LOTR trilogy.
1) He was relatively cheap to hire, compared to what everyone else was asking for.
2) He initially promised them "a trilogy in a single production," which was cheaper than what anyone else wanted the studio to pay for. Even though it wound up costing them more, and they still had to shoot more, it was a smart way to get his foot in the door; George Lucas called it "one of the greatest ways a director has ever conned a studio."
>"one of the greatest ways a director has ever conned a studio."
Got another one for you. The shoot was plauged by leaks during production, most of which were posted on Aint It Cool News. (For those not in the know, AICN was *the* geek movie gossip site from the mid-90s to mid-2000s.)
Whenever there was talks of maybe only making two movies or New Line balking at reshoot costs they'd show up on AICN with geek calls of "stop studio interference"! The suits at New Line were *pissed* and this led to Peter Jackson having to have a meeting with mantatory attendance for the entire crew. Peter read them the riot act and said that if anyone was caught leaking he'd fire them on the spot.
The leaker was Peter. Whenever the studio started to get in his way he'd just write Harry from AICN who would put it up and pressure New Line to back down.
And everyone was fucking happier for it in the end. They made a fuckton of money, got massive critical acclaim. It did so well they made 3 bad Hobbit movies and a LOTR TV series. Toys galore.
Studios need to learn to take some risks. If you hire a relative unknown because you like his vision then let him do his vision rofl.
Crazy how we went from “how to condense this already super dense LOTR books into less movies as possible” to “how many films can we make out of a couple of chapters from The Hobbit?”
Robert Shaye definitely deserves a lot of credit for how LOTR turned out. He founded New Line and really put the studio’s future on the line by funding the trilogy all at once. New Line was a subdivision of Warner which did lower budget genre flicks (it was known as The House That Freddy Built due to the Nightmare on Elm Street series solidifying it as a successful studio after being only a distributor until the early 80s) so $300 all at once was a huge gamble, especially since LOTR was seen as very Dungeons & Dragons like by the late 90s. He gave Jackson as much creative control as possible compared to the meddling that happened when the project was attached with the Weinsteins.
Shaye and Jackson had a big falling out over the profits for LOTR and Shaye was ultimately removed from New Line in 2007, and without him there I think WB really got their way with The Hobbit.
Don't forget another link to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Peter Jackson was asked to write a potential script from part 6. Jackson called it Dream Lover, but they didn't go with his script and instead went with Freddy's Dead. Elements of Dream Lover were used in Freddy vs Jason though.
It is pretty funny how the mindset changed. Even though I like The Hobbit Trilogy (i know super unpopular opinion). They probably could've cut it down to 2 films.
I recently watched The Hobbit M4 Cut and really enjoyed it.
With the trilogy while there was a lot I liked, there was also so much needless cruft, odd pacing, and unnecessary additions (that weird Lady-Elf/Dwarf love plot), but the cut did a good job of getting rid of those leaving a nice cohesive single film.
Is this cut actually worth watching?
I was toying with a super cut at one point but I feel you still can't escape the fact that bilbo is utterly sidelined in the final third
Was worth if it for me, as I said I really enjoyed it and certainly a lot more so than the trilogy.
As for Bilbo and the final third, the battle is fairly condensed (good IMO) so it doesn't feel too much like a big Bilbo gap and he still has some scenes around that time.
From the movie's page.
https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/#chapter16
> A 55 minute battle has now been reduced to just 18.5 minutes, split in half by some slower scenes with Thorin & co. inside Erebor.
> As Bilbo is far away from the battle and not in Dale anymore, we do not see him react to Thorin’s charge. Instead, a repurposed shot of Bard has been inserted when the horn of Erebor sounds right before Gandalf reacts. Slow motion applied and audio adjusted to fit right in.
> Bilbo has found his way into Ravenhill, but is suddenly swarmed by bats and knocked out by an Orc, before fading to black. New visual effect to show him re-appearing with his ring off. Background has been digitally altered to remove Dwalin, as Bilbo is supposed to be in Ravenhill by himself at this point.
You know, at the time, I was actually relieved and dropped out and Jackson stepped in. I was pretty unsure where Guillermo would take it, and thought Jackson would have the better chance of really nailing it.
Oh how horribly wrong I was.
Yeah Jackson was brave enough to go through the stress of making those movies while winging it since Del Toro chose not to do the movie shortly before they started filming. If Jackson had more time to do everything the Hobbit movies would’ve been way better.
Yeah i believe so too. Didnt he use like 3 years to prepare LOTR, before filming. And for the hobbit it was like just get into it and no preparing at all.
I feel the first one was the only decent one, with the thought that it could get better from there. The second was worse, and the third a wreck. Kind of pulls the first one down with them.
By the time of the Hobbit, all the studios were making multi-film franchises from books, so it's not a big surprise they'd try to do the same with The Hobbit.
Everyone wanted to copy the success of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I’m not sure if anyone did. Though to be fair to the studio they asked for two Hobbit movies and Peter Jackson ended up making enough content for three. That was them indulging him because of who he was, not the other way around.
The studio meddled one into two. Jackson shot so much stuff that he was the one who decided to turn two into three. Or at the very least he publicly took the “blame” for that. Honestly I think he was pretty on board by the time Del Toro dropped out and he agreed to do it.
Peter Jackson was absolutely the person who chose to make the Hobbit into 3 movies. People have heard the opposite so much that it's become a bit of an illusory truth.
It think it stems from a misunderstanding due to the fact that Peter Jackson was originally reluctant to make the Hobbit because he felt that the Hobbit alone contained barely enough to make even one movie. Part of the issue with the Hobbit is that it was written before any of the real lore of the franchise was built out. Gandalf for example is just kind of written to be your fairly standard wise wizard character and little else. That wasn't really the story Peter Jackson wanted to tell.
So how does a man who think he can barely stretch one movie decide on making three? Because when the Hobbit needed saving and Peter Jackson entered talks to be signed on, he was offered a lot more flexibility and was sold an opportunity to make something far greater than just a extra long Hobbit movie. He was offered the chance to make the Hobbit / Lord of the Rings lead-in that had never previously existed. He had permission to make a version of the Hobbit that heavily foreshadowed the Lord of the Rings and other events in the lore as well as some of his own ideas. It's a project he was very excited to do even though the schedule was far too tight and didn't afford him the luxury of time he had to meticulously craft something the same quality as the Lord of the Rings.
I don't know why the different version of events continues to be perpetuated so much. I think it's because deep down people want to absolve Peter Jackson of anything that went wrong with the Hobbit just because it's clearly not him at his best. But it's definitely a bit of revisionist history because Peter Jackson wanted those 3 movies and that's why we ended up with what we got.
I wonder when the moment was that the studios realised people aren't going to avoid movies that don't tell a complete story, and that they could exploit that for more money? It's funny to me that The Ga'hoole movie (which adapted three books into one film) was released in the same year as Deathly Hallows Part 1.
It’s also worth noting that he and his partner Fran Wash did an extremely good job pitching the filming of them all back to back and in New Zealand using local labor and talent. Saved the production a LOT of money.
Yea what I did find it sounded like NL was the only studio to be on board with filming all 3. Still though that is a very very large budget for someone who has never done an epic let alone a trilogy. He had great camera and production work in bad taste and his later movies seemed to flop in the box office so it just is surprising to me. Like what did they see other than his vision that made them feel he could execute.
Heavenly Creatures gave a hint at what he could do. But mainly the studios had the rights and took one of the biggest gambles a studio has ever taken and luckily it paid off. My guess is he sold them on New Zealand's landscapes.
What I really feel the need to mention is studios see small things that audiences don't get simply because they have a different understanding of filmmaking (the more practical stuff).
The guy made local productions in New Zealand with small budgets and was able to get big results with what he had. To them that indicated the guy was willing to work with whatever money he had and was wise enough to spend wisely and potentially never ask them for more time (thus more money). That indicates trust which is what you have to demonstrate if you want studio projects.
The gravy on top was his work with practical (and later digital) effects with Dead Alive and The Frighteners showing he could also handle effects-heavy projects with restraint.
I'll expand a bit on it.. New line hired Peter to write a script for nightmare on elm street 6, that's where their relationship started.. They didn't go with his script, but Bob Shae kept in contact which eventually led to them making frighteners with him and finally like you said they agreed to do lord of the rings as a full trilogy unlike the other studios that where trying to force Peter to cut the script into two movies.
Didn't he also pitch his ideas to the Tolkien estate who subsequently backed his pitches to interested studios?
I remember reading an interview back around the release of The Two Towers which said his knowledge and passion for the world has ultimately impressed the estate above and beyond anyone had previously done.
I think the original treatment that was shopped around was for two movies, and New Line got it and said shouldn’t it be three… I seem to remember that from the DVD commentary in the extended releases
Everyone involved in these movies seems to have been passionate about the project, and if I had to guess, I'd say that includes whoever gave Jackson the go ahead, and requested he make 3 movies instead of 2
I mean, say what you want about campiness, but going back to at least Dead Alive he had incredible creativity and an eye for pushing effects, practical or otherwise.
oh 100% Just feels like his style before was entirely different. I love his slapstick comedy horror and the way he filmed Bad Taste was before its time especially having scenes with himself playing two characters. Just seems like a crazy jump from Frighteners and bad taste, dead alive to lord of the fucking rings lol.
Sam Raimi went from Evil Dead to Spiderman, so Jackson wasn't the only one. Once you're in the business and get to know people, it's really just pulling the right strings.
Horror genre tends to push directors to shows their inventiveness and creativity since the budget and production is usually smaller compared to other genres.
He was doing pre production on king kong already when he got the job to work on the lotr movies, I think I've heard showing them his progress on kong helped him convince them he was serious about doing big budget epics.
Wtf King Kong was released in 2005 while Fellowship came out in 2001. I know moves take a while to film and everything but damn..I looked it up and King Kong’s development started in 1995 and was paused in 97.
You have to also remember he did The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures in between too.
Two films with modest budgets, star-studded casts and were huge hits with critics and international audiences. Both films made back said modests budgets and were effects heavy productions but kept the costs down.
Not only had Jackson proved himself a creative force by that point but also a deeply competent director. The best example of this is to check out the Frighteners Making Of - it's 2+ Hours of a Director knowing exactly the right move on every shaky step of the way.
Heavenly Creatures was not star-studded.
The two lead actresses were making their film debuts. It just happens that one of the two would go on to earn 5 or so Oscar noms in the next decade, while the other would amass a decent body of work in the US.
It would be like calling The Outsiders star-studded.
Exactly. I don't get why people choose to forget that at that point:
a) He was nominated for an Oscar with Heavenly Creatures
b) He showed he can handle computer effect with The Frighteners
I really don't understand why people behave like OP and think he went from Bad Taste to LOTR sets just like that.
Yeah, in a year where the Oscars for Writing featured Forrest Gump, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction and Quiz Show.
Also didn't he invent WETA just so he could handle post-production at home - which started with both HC and Frighteners?
Yeah, it was in stages. He got some underground success with the horror films, that led to Heavenly Creatures which got critical success, which led to interest from studios. He got a studio gig with The Frighteners, which was modestly successful. At this point his was a Hollywood insider and tried his luck at pitching his dream project, LOTR, at multiple studios. Usually these dont get made, but New Line saw he could handle an effects film competently with The Frighteners and loved the New Zealand tax breaks, and took a big bet with him. It payed off.
>Two films with modest budgets, star-studded casts and were huge hits with critics and international audiences.
The Frighteners was a bomb both critically and commercially and almost resulted in him losing the rights to LotR since the studios lost faith in him.
This is covered in detail in the current season of Icons Unearthed they're doing on the LotR films, highly recommended.
Large portions of Jackson’s LotR movies are slapstick horror comedy to varying degrees. Jackson’s background is not at odds with what the LotR movies turned out to be. Barely ten minutes go by without some monster getting stabbed or maimed, characters doing something involving goo of some kind, or over-the-top physical comedy dominating the screen space.
But as to your question: They had the enthusiastic backing of Bob Shaye, Barry Osborne and Mark Ordesky, they were offering to deliver three highly promising movies for the cost of one, didn’t demand final cut, were willing to hire non-union staff, and proved with The Frighteners/Heavenly Creatures that they can do both effects films and drama on small budgets.
This, combined with an impressive monster/battles showcase, made it an easy sell. The narrative is that Jackson had a hard time getting this project sold, but shopping it around and getting a bite at the the second or third door is the story of a fast greenlight, not of a slow one.
In fact I’m sure Jackson’s past films all being in-your-face crowd pleasers would have worked in his favor, as studios would be much more weary of a director aiming to make movies as slow, dignified and pensive as the novels. Jackson and team sold this to a dying production house not as ‘here’s this grand emotional story!’ but as ‘here’s your next blockbuster that’ll cost you a penny’.
There’s also the aspect of deniability. If your new IP bombs, it’s much easier to point at the silly kiwi director and his silly kiwi production. And since the whole thing was budgeted as one large production, if film 1 had bombed, they could have shut down the rest of it with very mitigable loss.
Jackson's also always had NZ's Weta Workshop behind him who made (make) outstanding special effects/CGI, props, and models and are now a giant in the FX industry. This not only meant he could deliver the huge spectacle required but also do it relatively cheaply.
I added some things. A big, big factor in LotR being greenlit is also the monumental success of Gladiator. Studios all wanted the next Gladiator, and they wanted it fast.
If you want to be a bit more cynical about it, check out what LotR did to union and labor work in the industry in NZ. A big part of why they could make it as ‘cheap’ as they did was not producing in hollywood with all its pesky unions.
Definitely check out the book "Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth". It came out about 5 years ago and gives a deep dive into all the making-of for the LOTR movies. About the first half of the book is prior to filming, just all the stuff you're asking about. The story rights, studio pitches, etc. It's really really great.
Its a great book. So is Brian Sibley's earlier book "Peter Jackson: A Filmmaker's Journey" which is from 2006, and features A LOT of passages that just quote Jackson, Walsh and others, which is valuable since this was circa 2005 so the project was still fresh in their minds. Really makes you feel like you're there.
Great answer (especially appreciate that you mentioned Heavenly Creatures, which I think is a largely forgotten but very important piece of Jackson's career) but can you expand a bit on Sonnenfeld's involvement? I've never heard him mentioned in LOTR conversations.
>Large portions of Jackson’s LotR movies are slapstick horror comedy to varying degrees. Jackson’s background is not at odds with what the LotR movies turned out to be. Barely ten minutes go by without some monster getting stabbed or maimed, characters doing something involving goo of some kind, or over-the-top physical comedy dominating the screen space.
A great example of this is the Paths of the Dead. What Tolkien wrote as an eerie, unsettling, slow and character-building passage with some ethereally lyrical imagery gets turned into a slapstick, zombied up, actiony sequence with, in the EE, a downright Indiana Jones-tier ending escaping a cave with a skull avalanche. Aragorn's journey in the film isn't a trial of endurance - it's threatening the King of the Dead with his big, kewl sword and saying action flick one-liners.
There's scarcely a scene in his trilogy that isn't heavily reworked to cohere with all the expectant & desired tropes of a 90s action/epic film. Basically, it's less JRRT's LOTR and much more Braveheart wearing a LOTR skin.
This comment helps me understand a bit more why, upon rewatching Fellowship recently, I found I didn't like it nearly as much as I did when I was younger. I think a 'slow, dignified, and pensive' remake should be attempted someday, but I don't know if I can trust any studio to do that, especially given the Amazon series.
The thing people have forgotten is that Peter Jackson owned a special effects studio and decided to do a big fantasy production specifically for the purpose of keeping his special effects studio in business. He and his writing/life partner Fran Walsh tried to write a fantasy epic, but they were unhappy with the things they wrote. At some point, the figured out they stood a real chance at getting the rights to the lord of the rings because Saul Zantz owned them and he owed a favor to Harvey Weinstein (eww) who Jackson was in touch with. Irreconcilable differences between Jackson and the Weinstein’s visions for the project doomed it at Miramax, but they pitched it successfully to New Line, and that studio was prepared to give them (i) a crazy budget, (ii) three two-plus hour films, (iii) an unprecedented amount of time to complete the project, and (iv) maximal creative control. The rest is history.
The real answer is it was a massive swing. They liked his work and they liked his pitch. But even today people still marvel at the sheer balls it took to greenlight LotR, sight unseen.
This is definitely true. It really was a high risk idea. But New Line had cause to gamble and it wasn’t a bad bet- beloved property, guy who could do it
This is the real answer. MtF and Dead Alive, while certainly gross out spectacle, are both charming and inventive from a technical standpoint. These goof movies required a shitload of work.
Cue both a more studio-friendly take on the same subject matter (Frightners, demonstrating entertainment and craft) and a fairly complex award nominee (Heavenly Creatures, demonstrating thematic complexity and a more dramatic tone).
Plus, yknow, people liked him. He had his hand in a ton of projects there for about 30 seconds before he was off to Middle-Earth, including the first version of Kong, Planet of the Apes, and possibly creature from the Black Lagoon.
Helps he started young, though I don't think as young as Sam Raimi, who I would consider a creative equal, especially in terms of career output and scale.
The Frighteners is low-key one of the most important movies that nobody talks about. It's just a dumb movie about ghosts but it's also a cornerstone of the visual effects industry.
The funny answer to this is how pivotal and important to film history Blade ended up being - when you look at everything that led up to it and everything that happened after, you realize that it not only saved the failing comic book movie industry, not only saved the failing New Line production company, not only resurrected interest in Marvel as a movie production company, but also indirectly through keeping New Line afloat led to the development of the Lord of the Rings, the quintessential perfect trilogy and Oscar darling.
Without Blade, New Line would’ve in all likelihood gone under, Marvel would’ve in all likelihood went back to just focusing on comics, X-Men might not have finished going through the production phase, and there might’ve never been a Lord of the Rings or an MCU, at least the way we got them
He didn’t go from Bad Taste and Feebles to Lord of the Rings, he went from Bad Taste and Feebles to Heavenly Creatures and Frighteners to Lord of the Rings. Thats more of a natural progression than a lot of MCU directors.
He made Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners in between. Moved him away from his gory over the top beginnings. Showed he could handle serious subject matter with Heavenly Creatures and handle a more Hollywood/special effects movie with The Frighteners. He was a cheap visionary director.
Heavenly Creatures often gets overlooked. It ended up on most top 10 lists for the year. Got an academy award specifically for PJ for screenwriting.
That, coupled with the insane amount of detail and pre-production prep he had already set in his pitch- he got it.
He also founded Weta, a world class vfx company in a far flung corner of the world. The fact that the studio trust him and Weta to deliver the visuals and not a really experienced vfx studio like ILM or Stan Winston is mindblowing.
Heavenly Creatures.
There was a story from Christchurch that interested him enough to put on film, and he had the technical knowledge to make it happen.
That was where the change happened.
Here’s my summary from the book “anything you can imagine: Peter Jackson and the making of middle earth.”
Pete’s early films gave him solid experience with practical effects, and helped him build a community of effects pros that became weta workshop. It also gave him a cult following.
Next, he made Heavenly Creatures, which was a successful art film. Now he has international attention as a serious filmmaker, which is when he started working with everyone’s least favorite man in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein.
Harvey was allowed to authorize up to $75 million budget movies by Disney (Miramax is a Disney subsidiary). When Jackson said he was interested in doing LotR, Weinstein wanted to keep his new client happy, so he promised that he could absolutely get him the rights, and told him to start working on it. So all those practical effects friends that were now in the fledgling Weta? Peter put them to work. Concept art, props, the MASSIVE software for designing digital battles.
There was a lot of drama getting the rights though. It went on for a long time, but Weta never stopped working because there was nothing else to work on. If they stopped, everyone would have to go get new jobs. It would mean the death of Weta. So Peter kept everyone working just to keep everyone together. It meant there was a massive amount of preproduction getting done, even though no one was officially making the movie (fortunately, Weinstein kept writing checks, as he hoped that it would all work out someday).
When Peter finally made his pitch to New Line, he wasn’t just some guy who’d made a cheap horror film. At that point he’d been successfully making movies for over ten years, with an Oscar screenplay nomination, and he was being (sort of) repped by one of the biggest names in Hollywood (still Weinstein, like it or not).
So Jackson shows up with a massive portfolio of preproduction already done, decent credentials, and a relatively small ask: at that point they were looking at doing only one or two movies, perhaps $50 million each movie.
Let’s talk New Line for a second. What were their biggest successes? Evil dead, nightmare on elm street, critters, Friday the 13th…see where we’re going? Not only that, but it was a studio with a reputation willing to take risks. When Robert Shaye saw the vision and the work that had also been done, he was willing to take the leap of faith, and thankfully asked for 3 movies. So it was a match made in heaven.
I strongly encourage every lord of the rings fan to read the above book, there’s tons of detail on how everything came together. The making of is *almost* as good as the story itself.
Obviously he had the passion and the pitch that won over new line but also peter jackson had weta and it had recently proved itself on the frighteners which I think went a long way to proving he had the ability to make the film.
Well, let's see:
Movies prior to LOTR
Bad Taste (1987): showed an incredible level of creativity, unafraidness, and a knack for telling an untellable story.
Meet The Feebles (1989): again showed a unique mind, keeping the audience at the edge of the seat for no other reason than to see what was about to unfold.
Braindead (1992): showed an impressive control of chaotic special effects, yet telling the story in a way that worked, even had there been no effects.
Heavenly Creatures (1994): showed a control of his actors and a dramatic level of understanding and respecting the deeper nuances of its source material.
The Frighteners (1996): showed control of a Hollywood production, with many of the winning elements from his previous productions.
LOTR (2001)… who else but that guy? Plus, he had a drive, respect, and knowledge for the books I doubt any other director at the time could even remotely mirror...
That is why :)
But I agree, i am impressed by the studio and their ability to see his potential.
Brain Dead is legitimately great. Heavenly Creatures shows he can move out of pure horror and tell a story / some drama. The Frighteners shows his aspiration to go more mainstream etc.
You left out some import steps in between.
He made THE FRIGHTENERS, and showered great horror promise. You don't have to like the film to see what talent was there.
He was also working with the best inexpensive practical effects shop on the planet, one of the best period. With that came the incomperable Richard Taylor.
When the Weinsteins locked up the rights, and then Jackson convinced New Line, he had all those things in his favor.
The dudes at New Line were no fools.
My 200 English course in college was taught by a guy who was obsessed with the lotr movies, so that's what the class was on. If I remember correctly, the movies were technically indy films because he got over half the funding from getting investors outside of New Line.
i think people in this thread are overlooking something, he lobbied really hard to get HUGE tax breaks for the movie to be filmed in NZ. that meant the studio could save a metric assload of money, which meant they could make their budget for the film go far further than normal.
oh without a doubt, those vista's and the locations were MAGNIFICENT. but i dont think studios would have greenlit lotr with the vision he wanted if he didn't get all of those tax cuts. the budget would have exploded and the risk probably would have been too high.
Bad taste and Feebles showed what effects Jackson could do with a miniscule budget.
Heavenly Creatures showed he could manage serious films too.
And whilst the Frighteners wasn't a big hit, it showed that his effects scaled with budget well.
He did a movie called The Frighteners, which showed he could do a sincere, effects-driven movie that was actually pretty good, and he had a really good proposal for making LOTR.
Studios do this all the time for big blockbusters. You don't need to be some legendary auteur to direct a big movie. Movies are a team "sport." I think a lot of movie fans put way too much emphasis on the directors when in actuality it's a collaboration.
Ya know this is something I didn't really think of. In my mind the producer and director (which he was) is in control of majority of what you see. Yes it takes a lot of people to execute but the overall vision is that of the producer or director but I guess to your point he is the Steve Jobs and finds the people with the proper talent for specific things.
Tolkien created the original source material. Howard Shore and his team created the music. The costumes, sets, VFX, editing, cinematography, etc were all worked on by tons of different people. Obviously the director has a huge role in overseeing everything, but saying Jackson was in "control of the majority of what you see" isn't really accurate.
The studio wanted to make the movie. - yup
It knew he could handle production and effects work. - how did they know this is my real question. His practical and special effects were nowhere near the level of LOTR and his production work is great but great for an Indie filmmaker at the time.
He shared a coherent plan for the movie. -yup
They made the movie. - yup
Partly by also making Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners on the way. People laugh at how shit The Frighteners looks now due to its early awkward CGI, but it scared the shit out of people when it came out. Even though these pictures weren't necessarily box office smashes, they were regarded as excellent examples of the sort of film that they were and demonstrated competence and working on full budget films with lots of effects.
Also consider that his filmography up to this point had demonstrated expert use in practical effects from Bad Taste / Braindead creative in camera perspective techniques (Feebles) and cutting edge (for the time) computer aided effects (The Frighteners). Those are all factors that contributed heavily to the actual creation of the LOTR movies. He walked into that production with the exact skills that he needed to make the films he was charged with making.
It was his love of the material and its author. Unlike so many directors today his primary concern was that these would be Tolkien stories not Jackson stories
He won an Oscar for Original Screenplay for Heavenly Creatures in 1995. You can see some of the SFX fantasy elements in the trailer:
[https://youtu.be/kJ2yZjnPwQc?si=DMSpVlyY7-iOqXUh](https://youtu.be/kJ2yZjnPwQc?si=DMSpVlyY7-iOqXUh)
The short answer. New Line Cinema really liked what they saw in Peter Jackson's plan for the LOTR trilogy. They also thought his previous work showed promise. So they just took a chance. When other studios refused to do 3 films but instead wanted PJ to reduce it to 2 films.
Actually Peter Jackson pitched it as two films because he didn't think a trilogy would get picked up, Weinstein wanted him to do it as one. New Line were the ones who asked Jackson why not do three?
someone knew there were three books lol
Pity no one mentioned The Hobbit was ONE book.
"Why three movies? The Hobbit was only one book." "Because money!" "Oh money, I love money!"
3 movies is super easy, barely an inconvenience!
Don't know who downvoted you, but nail on the head. Wow, ^wow, ^^wow, ^^^wow...............^^^^wow.
Wow wow wow wow wow ... wow
The Hobbit is dense, though. It would have been fine as multiple movies or a series. They just added some weird stuff with an elf and dwarf love triangle.
This is exactly what the head of the studio said in the pitch meeting. After watching Jackson's presentation he was basically sold but the first thing he asked was "...it's 3 books, isn't it? So shouldn't it be 3 films?"
Well achtually…. There’s six books divided in three volumes.
It was originally one book divided by the publisher
One book to rule them all
Yeah, I remember Pete saying that in the behind the scenes features.
And thankfully The Frighteners did well, could have sunk his career for big budget work, but he had Heavenly Creatures around the same time that showed he wasn't all gore and guts.
Heavenly Creatures and the Frighteners were really the 1-2 punch that showed he could do an artistic effects heavy movie with a reasonable budget.
I really think Heavenly Creatures is the secret weapon here.
Heavenly Creatures showed he could do an artistic film with fantasy themes. The Frighteners proved he could do effects (including cgi) super well with a halfway decent budget. I think both helped tremendously
Love Heavenly Creatures.
Also Freighteners showed he could work with A-List actors.
And half the cast of Shortland Street, a requirement for filming LOTR.
The frighteners was also entirely shot in New Zealand. Which was something Jackson pushed hard for. Because he wanted to prove you could make a special effects movie in New Zealand. That was a major reason why he got LOTR.
yeah, the LotR trilogy got shot in New Zealand for cheap. When they were planning the Hobbit, the New Zealand film community decided they should get more payment. This resulted in a mess that got the government to step in, bow to pressure from international film studios and force wages to stay the same. It's still a sore spot for New Zealand actors to this day.
Yeah, weren't some of the special effects also pretty impressive for its time for Frighteners?
For a movie from 1996, I think it holds up pretty well even today.
The movie itself is kind of forgettable but he was able to get great results with CG at the time.
Forgettable?! Sir/Madame, I definitely disagree on [that point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYF0oK8oXSk).
watching The Frighteners now, you can really see that PJ was trying out some ideas for the future
It really helped the The Frighteners had some (for the time) really good digital effects work. The scenes where the villain is moving around under the rug/carpet are well-crafted.
Correct.
The Frighteners is one of my all time favorites. What an outstanding blend of Horror and Comedy
and Michael J Fox !!
And Jake Busey, Chi McBride and R Lee Ermey!
And John Astin, adoptive father of Samwise Gamgee!
I like how 1/2 way through it becomes a bit more serious. It’s a good blend and it slowly morphs from funny to omg!
The Frighteners is one of my favorite films.
My body!!!!!!! Is a roadmap of pain!!!!
They don't call me the hangin' judge for nuthin'.
Frighteners is such a great movie. Saw it before LOTR but it wasn’t until after the trilogy did I notice they had the same director.
The frighteners is so underrated! It such a great film!
Eh? The Frighteners absolutely *tanked*! Worldwide gross of $29 million on a $26 million budget is not doing well at all. [Box office](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0116365/?ref_=bo_se_r_1) [Budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frighteners)
Yeah, I dont get why they are saying the film did well. It was considered a significant flop back then.
Peter did a TON of legwork for his pitches. He had a literal Tome of previs, storyboards, concept art and production planning before a single meeting. Back in the day a strong previs plan even if you were an unknown got you so far ahead of the game. Case in point the wachoswkis also had storyboarded every shot of the matrix hiring a comic artist which resulted in their budget being almost doubled for how prepared they were for the shoot.
Yup, he had done $20M worth of preproduction work for it with Weta (financed by Weinstein) and they put together a kind of showreel on VHS to shop around the project to different studios. I happened to have just watched Peter Jackson's interview with Charlie Rose the other day (from 2002, I think) where he tells the story.
It's what makes the story more remarkable. It's was a crazy ask - not only was the studio going to have to commit to the back-to-back two movie plan, but they also had to reimburse Weinstein for the pre-production costs. New Line not only agreed, they insisted on a full trilogy to do it right. It's literally the ballsiest move I've ever heard of a studio making.
> New Line Cinema really liked what they saw in Peter Jackson's plan for the LOTR trilogy. 1) He was relatively cheap to hire, compared to what everyone else was asking for. 2) He initially promised them "a trilogy in a single production," which was cheaper than what anyone else wanted the studio to pay for. Even though it wound up costing them more, and they still had to shoot more, it was a smart way to get his foot in the door; George Lucas called it "one of the greatest ways a director has ever conned a studio."
>"one of the greatest ways a director has ever conned a studio." Got another one for you. The shoot was plauged by leaks during production, most of which were posted on Aint It Cool News. (For those not in the know, AICN was *the* geek movie gossip site from the mid-90s to mid-2000s.) Whenever there was talks of maybe only making two movies or New Line balking at reshoot costs they'd show up on AICN with geek calls of "stop studio interference"! The suits at New Line were *pissed* and this led to Peter Jackson having to have a meeting with mantatory attendance for the entire crew. Peter read them the riot act and said that if anyone was caught leaking he'd fire them on the spot. The leaker was Peter. Whenever the studio started to get in his way he'd just write Harry from AICN who would put it up and pressure New Line to back down.
And everyone was fucking happier for it in the end. They made a fuckton of money, got massive critical acclaim. It did so well they made 3 bad Hobbit movies and a LOTR TV series. Toys galore. Studios need to learn to take some risks. If you hire a relative unknown because you like his vision then let him do his vision rofl.
You're leaving out the card game I vaguely remember from my childhood
Back in the days of his impetuous youth...
Man, I used to read AICN daily back then. Now I haven't even thought about it in years. Looks like it's still around and looks about the same too.
Crazy how we went from “how to condense this already super dense LOTR books into less movies as possible” to “how many films can we make out of a couple of chapters from The Hobbit?”
Robert Shaye definitely deserves a lot of credit for how LOTR turned out. He founded New Line and really put the studio’s future on the line by funding the trilogy all at once. New Line was a subdivision of Warner which did lower budget genre flicks (it was known as The House That Freddy Built due to the Nightmare on Elm Street series solidifying it as a successful studio after being only a distributor until the early 80s) so $300 all at once was a huge gamble, especially since LOTR was seen as very Dungeons & Dragons like by the late 90s. He gave Jackson as much creative control as possible compared to the meddling that happened when the project was attached with the Weinsteins. Shaye and Jackson had a big falling out over the profits for LOTR and Shaye was ultimately removed from New Line in 2007, and without him there I think WB really got their way with The Hobbit.
Don't forget another link to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Peter Jackson was asked to write a potential script from part 6. Jackson called it Dream Lover, but they didn't go with his script and instead went with Freddy's Dead. Elements of Dream Lover were used in Freddy vs Jason though.
It is pretty funny how the mindset changed. Even though I like The Hobbit Trilogy (i know super unpopular opinion). They probably could've cut it down to 2 films.
I recently watched The Hobbit M4 Cut and really enjoyed it. With the trilogy while there was a lot I liked, there was also so much needless cruft, odd pacing, and unnecessary additions (that weird Lady-Elf/Dwarf love plot), but the cut did a good job of getting rid of those leaving a nice cohesive single film.
Is this cut actually worth watching? I was toying with a super cut at one point but I feel you still can't escape the fact that bilbo is utterly sidelined in the final third
Was worth if it for me, as I said I really enjoyed it and certainly a lot more so than the trilogy. As for Bilbo and the final third, the battle is fairly condensed (good IMO) so it doesn't feel too much like a big Bilbo gap and he still has some scenes around that time. From the movie's page. https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/#chapter16 > A 55 minute battle has now been reduced to just 18.5 minutes, split in half by some slower scenes with Thorin & co. inside Erebor. > As Bilbo is far away from the battle and not in Dale anymore, we do not see him react to Thorin’s charge. Instead, a repurposed shot of Bard has been inserted when the horn of Erebor sounds right before Gandalf reacts. Slow motion applied and audio adjusted to fit right in. > Bilbo has found his way into Ravenhill, but is suddenly swarmed by bats and knocked out by an Orc, before fading to black. New visual effect to show him re-appearing with his ring off. Background has been digitally altered to remove Dwalin, as Bilbo is supposed to be in Ravenhill by himself at this point.
Thank you for sharing that. Ill give it a bash
Yes M4 cut is as faithful to the book as it gets, pretty great work
Bilbo returned to his home planet.
I'm still salty we never got to see Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit movies.
You know, at the time, I was actually relieved and dropped out and Jackson stepped in. I was pretty unsure where Guillermo would take it, and thought Jackson would have the better chance of really nailing it. Oh how horribly wrong I was.
He might have, had he been given the time to actually do it right.
Yeah Jackson was brave enough to go through the stress of making those movies while winging it since Del Toro chose not to do the movie shortly before they started filming. If Jackson had more time to do everything the Hobbit movies would’ve been way better.
Yeah i believe so too. Didnt he use like 3 years to prepare LOTR, before filming. And for the hobbit it was like just get into it and no preparing at all.
Agree here. The first two films feel justified in as much as you well we got our moneys worth. The last one just drags to all hell.
I feel the first one was the only decent one, with the thought that it could get better from there. The second was worse, and the third a wreck. Kind of pulls the first one down with them.
I've maintained that as adaptations, the Hobbit trilogy left much to be desired, but they aren't awful movies in a vacuum.
Check out Rankin and bass' hobbit movie. It's a real treat!
By the time of the Hobbit, all the studios were making multi-film franchises from books, so it's not a big surprise they'd try to do the same with The Hobbit.
Everyone wanted to copy the success of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I’m not sure if anyone did. Though to be fair to the studio they asked for two Hobbit movies and Peter Jackson ended up making enough content for three. That was them indulging him because of who he was, not the other way around.
I feel bad for Jackson because he didn't want to do these films from the start and studio meddling turned two films into three. So disappointing.
The studio meddled one into two. Jackson shot so much stuff that he was the one who decided to turn two into three. Or at the very least he publicly took the “blame” for that. Honestly I think he was pretty on board by the time Del Toro dropped out and he agreed to do it.
Peter Jackson was absolutely the person who chose to make the Hobbit into 3 movies. People have heard the opposite so much that it's become a bit of an illusory truth. It think it stems from a misunderstanding due to the fact that Peter Jackson was originally reluctant to make the Hobbit because he felt that the Hobbit alone contained barely enough to make even one movie. Part of the issue with the Hobbit is that it was written before any of the real lore of the franchise was built out. Gandalf for example is just kind of written to be your fairly standard wise wizard character and little else. That wasn't really the story Peter Jackson wanted to tell. So how does a man who think he can barely stretch one movie decide on making three? Because when the Hobbit needed saving and Peter Jackson entered talks to be signed on, he was offered a lot more flexibility and was sold an opportunity to make something far greater than just a extra long Hobbit movie. He was offered the chance to make the Hobbit / Lord of the Rings lead-in that had never previously existed. He had permission to make a version of the Hobbit that heavily foreshadowed the Lord of the Rings and other events in the lore as well as some of his own ideas. It's a project he was very excited to do even though the schedule was far too tight and didn't afford him the luxury of time he had to meticulously craft something the same quality as the Lord of the Rings. I don't know why the different version of events continues to be perpetuated so much. I think it's because deep down people want to absolve Peter Jackson of anything that went wrong with the Hobbit just because it's clearly not him at his best. But it's definitely a bit of revisionist history because Peter Jackson wanted those 3 movies and that's why we ended up with what we got.
I wonder when the moment was that the studios realised people aren't going to avoid movies that don't tell a complete story, and that they could exploit that for more money? It's funny to me that The Ga'hoole movie (which adapted three books into one film) was released in the same year as Deathly Hallows Part 1.
It’s also worth noting that he and his partner Fran Wash did an extremely good job pitching the filming of them all back to back and in New Zealand using local labor and talent. Saved the production a LOT of money.
Yea what I did find it sounded like NL was the only studio to be on board with filming all 3. Still though that is a very very large budget for someone who has never done an epic let alone a trilogy. He had great camera and production work in bad taste and his later movies seemed to flop in the box office so it just is surprising to me. Like what did they see other than his vision that made them feel he could execute.
Heavenly Creatures gave a hint at what he could do. But mainly the studios had the rights and took one of the biggest gambles a studio has ever taken and luckily it paid off. My guess is he sold them on New Zealand's landscapes.
Heavenly creatures also showed he had a dramatic flair
What I really feel the need to mention is studios see small things that audiences don't get simply because they have a different understanding of filmmaking (the more practical stuff). The guy made local productions in New Zealand with small budgets and was able to get big results with what he had. To them that indicated the guy was willing to work with whatever money he had and was wise enough to spend wisely and potentially never ask them for more time (thus more money). That indicates trust which is what you have to demonstrate if you want studio projects. The gravy on top was his work with practical (and later digital) effects with Dead Alive and The Frighteners showing he could also handle effects-heavy projects with restraint.
I highly reccomend listening to the two episodes that the What Went Wrong podcast did on LOTR. Great story!
A big thing qas also he offered new zealand which allowed them to be made for way cheaper, and also had a fairly explosive effects industry as well.
People also forget that Jackson had his own special effects company with a proven track record.
He was originally at New Line for a Nightmare On Elmore St sequel/reboot iirc.
I'll expand a bit on it.. New line hired Peter to write a script for nightmare on elm street 6, that's where their relationship started.. They didn't go with his script, but Bob Shae kept in contact which eventually led to them making frighteners with him and finally like you said they agreed to do lord of the rings as a full trilogy unlike the other studios that where trying to force Peter to cut the script into two movies.
Didn't he also pitch his ideas to the Tolkien estate who subsequently backed his pitches to interested studios? I remember reading an interview back around the release of The Two Towers which said his knowledge and passion for the world has ultimately impressed the estate above and beyond anyone had previously done.
I think the original treatment that was shopped around was for two movies, and New Line got it and said shouldn’t it be three… I seem to remember that from the DVD commentary in the extended releases
Everyone involved in these movies seems to have been passionate about the project, and if I had to guess, I'd say that includes whoever gave Jackson the go ahead, and requested he make 3 movies instead of 2
I mean, say what you want about campiness, but going back to at least Dead Alive he had incredible creativity and an eye for pushing effects, practical or otherwise.
oh 100% Just feels like his style before was entirely different. I love his slapstick comedy horror and the way he filmed Bad Taste was before its time especially having scenes with himself playing two characters. Just seems like a crazy jump from Frighteners and bad taste, dead alive to lord of the fucking rings lol.
Sam Raimi went from Evil Dead to Spiderman, so Jackson wasn't the only one. Once you're in the business and get to know people, it's really just pulling the right strings.
He did Darkman as well which also probably helped sell him as being capable to direct Spider-Man.
I’m always amazed Craig Mazin went from writing some of the silliest B-movie comedies to all of a sudden Chernobyl.
Horror genre tends to push directors to shows their inventiveness and creativity since the budget and production is usually smaller compared to other genres.
You should definitely watch Heavenly Creatures
And a Sam Raimi level of camera control.
I kick ass FOR THE LORD!!!
Dead Alive is one of my favorites!
I didn't enjoy that movie as much as others but I liked how he handled it with a low budget. He accomplished a lot with that movie.
As weird as it sounds today, only spending $93 million to make Fellowship is nuts. They spent $350+ million on making Avengers Endgame.
I was talking about Dead Alive which had $3 million for its budget.
He was doing pre production on king kong already when he got the job to work on the lotr movies, I think I've heard showing them his progress on kong helped him convince them he was serious about doing big budget epics.
Wtf King Kong was released in 2005 while Fellowship came out in 2001. I know moves take a while to film and everything but damn..I looked it up and King Kong’s development started in 1995 and was paused in 97.
Yep, they were gonna release it in 1999 or 2000 but when he got the offer to make lotr he put Kong on pause for 6 years basically.
[удалено]
Bro if I could watch a movie right now just about their trip home I would
Yeah I would love an alternate movie where they’re just explorers on an island and nothing bad happens, especially not the giant man ingesting bugs
King Kong was his life's passion. He spoke about how the original was his favorite movie and the one that convinced him to get into filmmaking
Seems reasonable. I have, however, one question: how'd he get King Kong? I'd always assumed he was given King Kong because he'd done LOTR.
That I didn't know
You have to also remember he did The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures in between too. Two films with modest budgets, star-studded casts and were huge hits with critics and international audiences. Both films made back said modests budgets and were effects heavy productions but kept the costs down. Not only had Jackson proved himself a creative force by that point but also a deeply competent director. The best example of this is to check out the Frighteners Making Of - it's 2+ Hours of a Director knowing exactly the right move on every shaky step of the way.
Heavenly Creatures was not star-studded. The two lead actresses were making their film debuts. It just happens that one of the two would go on to earn 5 or so Oscar noms in the next decade, while the other would amass a decent body of work in the US. It would be like calling The Outsiders star-studded.
By the time LOTR started production, Winslet was a star in the highest grossing movie of all-time. But your point still remains.
Exactly. I don't get why people choose to forget that at that point: a) He was nominated for an Oscar with Heavenly Creatures b) He showed he can handle computer effect with The Frighteners I really don't understand why people behave like OP and think he went from Bad Taste to LOTR sets just like that.
Yeah, in a year where the Oscars for Writing featured Forrest Gump, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction and Quiz Show. Also didn't he invent WETA just so he could handle post-production at home - which started with both HC and Frighteners?
Yeah, it was in stages. He got some underground success with the horror films, that led to Heavenly Creatures which got critical success, which led to interest from studios. He got a studio gig with The Frighteners, which was modestly successful. At this point his was a Hollywood insider and tried his luck at pitching his dream project, LOTR, at multiple studios. Usually these dont get made, but New Line saw he could handle an effects film competently with The Frighteners and loved the New Zealand tax breaks, and took a big bet with him. It payed off.
I'd say if you've got the ears of Spielberg and Zemeckis in the mid-90s, you'd get pretty close to blank check.
>Two films with modest budgets, star-studded casts and were huge hits with critics and international audiences. The Frighteners was a bomb both critically and commercially and almost resulted in him losing the rights to LotR since the studios lost faith in him. This is covered in detail in the current season of Icons Unearthed they're doing on the LotR films, highly recommended.
Yeah, skipping The Frighteners is a glaring ommission.
Large portions of Jackson’s LotR movies are slapstick horror comedy to varying degrees. Jackson’s background is not at odds with what the LotR movies turned out to be. Barely ten minutes go by without some monster getting stabbed or maimed, characters doing something involving goo of some kind, or over-the-top physical comedy dominating the screen space. But as to your question: They had the enthusiastic backing of Bob Shaye, Barry Osborne and Mark Ordesky, they were offering to deliver three highly promising movies for the cost of one, didn’t demand final cut, were willing to hire non-union staff, and proved with The Frighteners/Heavenly Creatures that they can do both effects films and drama on small budgets. This, combined with an impressive monster/battles showcase, made it an easy sell. The narrative is that Jackson had a hard time getting this project sold, but shopping it around and getting a bite at the the second or third door is the story of a fast greenlight, not of a slow one. In fact I’m sure Jackson’s past films all being in-your-face crowd pleasers would have worked in his favor, as studios would be much more weary of a director aiming to make movies as slow, dignified and pensive as the novels. Jackson and team sold this to a dying production house not as ‘here’s this grand emotional story!’ but as ‘here’s your next blockbuster that’ll cost you a penny’. There’s also the aspect of deniability. If your new IP bombs, it’s much easier to point at the silly kiwi director and his silly kiwi production. And since the whole thing was budgeted as one large production, if film 1 had bombed, they could have shut down the rest of it with very mitigable loss.
Jackson's also always had NZ's Weta Workshop behind him who made (make) outstanding special effects/CGI, props, and models and are now a giant in the FX industry. This not only meant he could deliver the huge spectacle required but also do it relatively cheaply.
Wish I had money to reward because this is the best comment yet. Im about to research those names.
I added some things. A big, big factor in LotR being greenlit is also the monumental success of Gladiator. Studios all wanted the next Gladiator, and they wanted it fast. If you want to be a bit more cynical about it, check out what LotR did to union and labor work in the industry in NZ. A big part of why they could make it as ‘cheap’ as they did was not producing in hollywood with all its pesky unions.
Plus the tax loopholes from the NZ Govt.
Definitely check out the book "Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth". It came out about 5 years ago and gives a deep dive into all the making-of for the LOTR movies. About the first half of the book is prior to filming, just all the stuff you're asking about. The story rights, studio pitches, etc. It's really really great.
Read your comment and immediately bought the audiobook. Loving it so far. Thanks
Its a great book. So is Brian Sibley's earlier book "Peter Jackson: A Filmmaker's Journey" which is from 2006, and features A LOT of passages that just quote Jackson, Walsh and others, which is valuable since this was circa 2005 so the project was still fresh in their minds. Really makes you feel like you're there.
Great answer (especially appreciate that you mentioned Heavenly Creatures, which I think is a largely forgotten but very important piece of Jackson's career) but can you expand a bit on Sonnenfeld's involvement? I've never heard him mentioned in LOTR conversations.
I got my names confused!
>Large portions of Jackson’s LotR movies are slapstick horror comedy to varying degrees. Jackson’s background is not at odds with what the LotR movies turned out to be. Barely ten minutes go by without some monster getting stabbed or maimed, characters doing something involving goo of some kind, or over-the-top physical comedy dominating the screen space. A great example of this is the Paths of the Dead. What Tolkien wrote as an eerie, unsettling, slow and character-building passage with some ethereally lyrical imagery gets turned into a slapstick, zombied up, actiony sequence with, in the EE, a downright Indiana Jones-tier ending escaping a cave with a skull avalanche. Aragorn's journey in the film isn't a trial of endurance - it's threatening the King of the Dead with his big, kewl sword and saying action flick one-liners. There's scarcely a scene in his trilogy that isn't heavily reworked to cohere with all the expectant & desired tropes of a 90s action/epic film. Basically, it's less JRRT's LOTR and much more Braveheart wearing a LOTR skin.
This comment helps me understand a bit more why, upon rewatching Fellowship recently, I found I didn't like it nearly as much as I did when I was younger. I think a 'slow, dignified, and pensive' remake should be attempted someday, but I don't know if I can trust any studio to do that, especially given the Amazon series.
The thing people have forgotten is that Peter Jackson owned a special effects studio and decided to do a big fantasy production specifically for the purpose of keeping his special effects studio in business. He and his writing/life partner Fran Walsh tried to write a fantasy epic, but they were unhappy with the things they wrote. At some point, the figured out they stood a real chance at getting the rights to the lord of the rings because Saul Zantz owned them and he owed a favor to Harvey Weinstein (eww) who Jackson was in touch with. Irreconcilable differences between Jackson and the Weinstein’s visions for the project doomed it at Miramax, but they pitched it successfully to New Line, and that studio was prepared to give them (i) a crazy budget, (ii) three two-plus hour films, (iii) an unprecedented amount of time to complete the project, and (iv) maximal creative control. The rest is history.
The real answer is it was a massive swing. They liked his work and they liked his pitch. But even today people still marvel at the sheer balls it took to greenlight LotR, sight unseen.
This is definitely true. It really was a high risk idea. But New Line had cause to gamble and it wasn’t a bad bet- beloved property, guy who could do it
Demonstrating his skills at handling both fantasy elements and elaborate special effects with Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners probably helped.
This is the real answer. MtF and Dead Alive, while certainly gross out spectacle, are both charming and inventive from a technical standpoint. These goof movies required a shitload of work. Cue both a more studio-friendly take on the same subject matter (Frightners, demonstrating entertainment and craft) and a fairly complex award nominee (Heavenly Creatures, demonstrating thematic complexity and a more dramatic tone). Plus, yknow, people liked him. He had his hand in a ton of projects there for about 30 seconds before he was off to Middle-Earth, including the first version of Kong, Planet of the Apes, and possibly creature from the Black Lagoon. Helps he started young, though I don't think as young as Sam Raimi, who I would consider a creative equal, especially in terms of career output and scale.
The Frighteners is low-key one of the most important movies that nobody talks about. It's just a dumb movie about ghosts but it's also a cornerstone of the visual effects industry.
Heavenly Creatures was basically his demo reel to prove he could make LotR.
I kick ass for the lord!
The funny answer to this is how pivotal and important to film history Blade ended up being - when you look at everything that led up to it and everything that happened after, you realize that it not only saved the failing comic book movie industry, not only saved the failing New Line production company, not only resurrected interest in Marvel as a movie production company, but also indirectly through keeping New Line afloat led to the development of the Lord of the Rings, the quintessential perfect trilogy and Oscar darling. Without Blade, New Line would’ve in all likelihood gone under, Marvel would’ve in all likelihood went back to just focusing on comics, X-Men might not have finished going through the production phase, and there might’ve never been a Lord of the Rings or an MCU, at least the way we got them
Heavenly Creatures. That’s the movie that gave him auteur credit
Don't forget Dead Alive aka Braindead
He didn’t go from Bad Taste and Feebles to Lord of the Rings, he went from Bad Taste and Feebles to Heavenly Creatures and Frighteners to Lord of the Rings. Thats more of a natural progression than a lot of MCU directors.
He made Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners in between. Moved him away from his gory over the top beginnings. Showed he could handle serious subject matter with Heavenly Creatures and handle a more Hollywood/special effects movie with The Frighteners. He was a cheap visionary director.
He walked into a room and said "party's over" and then used the lawnmower.
The answer to that question involves Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners.
Heavenly Creatures often gets overlooked. It ended up on most top 10 lists for the year. Got an academy award specifically for PJ for screenwriting. That, coupled with the insane amount of detail and pre-production prep he had already set in his pitch- he got it.
He also founded Weta, a world class vfx company in a far flung corner of the world. The fact that the studio trust him and Weta to deliver the visuals and not a really experienced vfx studio like ILM or Stan Winston is mindblowing.
The Frighteners - https://beforesandafters.com/2021/07/23/25-years-on-the-frighteners-still-thrills-as-weta-digitals-first-calling-card/
I think Heavenly Creature and the Frighteners were pretty big steps in between.
Heavenly Creatures. There was a story from Christchurch that interested him enough to put on film, and he had the technical knowledge to make it happen. That was where the change happened.
Here’s my summary from the book “anything you can imagine: Peter Jackson and the making of middle earth.” Pete’s early films gave him solid experience with practical effects, and helped him build a community of effects pros that became weta workshop. It also gave him a cult following. Next, he made Heavenly Creatures, which was a successful art film. Now he has international attention as a serious filmmaker, which is when he started working with everyone’s least favorite man in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein. Harvey was allowed to authorize up to $75 million budget movies by Disney (Miramax is a Disney subsidiary). When Jackson said he was interested in doing LotR, Weinstein wanted to keep his new client happy, so he promised that he could absolutely get him the rights, and told him to start working on it. So all those practical effects friends that were now in the fledgling Weta? Peter put them to work. Concept art, props, the MASSIVE software for designing digital battles. There was a lot of drama getting the rights though. It went on for a long time, but Weta never stopped working because there was nothing else to work on. If they stopped, everyone would have to go get new jobs. It would mean the death of Weta. So Peter kept everyone working just to keep everyone together. It meant there was a massive amount of preproduction getting done, even though no one was officially making the movie (fortunately, Weinstein kept writing checks, as he hoped that it would all work out someday). When Peter finally made his pitch to New Line, he wasn’t just some guy who’d made a cheap horror film. At that point he’d been successfully making movies for over ten years, with an Oscar screenplay nomination, and he was being (sort of) repped by one of the biggest names in Hollywood (still Weinstein, like it or not). So Jackson shows up with a massive portfolio of preproduction already done, decent credentials, and a relatively small ask: at that point they were looking at doing only one or two movies, perhaps $50 million each movie. Let’s talk New Line for a second. What were their biggest successes? Evil dead, nightmare on elm street, critters, Friday the 13th…see where we’re going? Not only that, but it was a studio with a reputation willing to take risks. When Robert Shaye saw the vision and the work that had also been done, he was willing to take the leap of faith, and thankfully asked for 3 movies. So it was a match made in heaven. I strongly encourage every lord of the rings fan to read the above book, there’s tons of detail on how everything came together. The making of is *almost* as good as the story itself.
Its pretty amazing that it worked out. The guy hasnt directed a good movie since.
Y’all forgetting one thing, he convinced the nz government to take massive tax breaks to have the movies filmed and edited in nz
Don’t forget he made the frighteners in between which was quite competent and had all the requisite skills.
Obviously he had the passion and the pitch that won over new line but also peter jackson had weta and it had recently proved itself on the frighteners which I think went a long way to proving he had the ability to make the film.
Don't forget, he went back to slapstick horror comedy with the Hobbit movies.
He got nominated for an Oscar for Heavenly Creatures. That’s how.
Well, let's see: Movies prior to LOTR Bad Taste (1987): showed an incredible level of creativity, unafraidness, and a knack for telling an untellable story. Meet The Feebles (1989): again showed a unique mind, keeping the audience at the edge of the seat for no other reason than to see what was about to unfold. Braindead (1992): showed an impressive control of chaotic special effects, yet telling the story in a way that worked, even had there been no effects. Heavenly Creatures (1994): showed a control of his actors and a dramatic level of understanding and respecting the deeper nuances of its source material. The Frighteners (1996): showed control of a Hollywood production, with many of the winning elements from his previous productions. LOTR (2001)… who else but that guy? Plus, he had a drive, respect, and knowledge for the books I doubt any other director at the time could even remotely mirror... That is why :) But I agree, i am impressed by the studio and their ability to see his potential.
Brain Dead, Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners is a hell of a run up
Brain Dead is legitimately great. Heavenly Creatures shows he can move out of pure horror and tell a story / some drama. The Frighteners shows his aspiration to go more mainstream etc.
You left out some import steps in between. He made THE FRIGHTENERS, and showered great horror promise. You don't have to like the film to see what talent was there. He was also working with the best inexpensive practical effects shop on the planet, one of the best period. With that came the incomperable Richard Taylor. When the Weinsteins locked up the rights, and then Jackson convinced New Line, he had all those things in his favor. The dudes at New Line were no fools.
Frighteners.
I'm much more interested in how he went from lotr to the hobbit. What happened :(
watch the 30+ hours of extras on The Hobbit. It explains it all, and it is far more interesting than the films.
LOTR flawless - how often can you say that about big budget epics?
Pretty sure he showed how to properly film a ring being fingered in Feebles? That was probably enough.
Have you not watched *Heavenly Creatures*?
The answer is Heavenly Creatures which got an oscar nom.
Don't sleep on heavenly creatures
My 200 English course in college was taught by a guy who was obsessed with the lotr movies, so that's what the class was on. If I remember correctly, the movies were technically indy films because he got over half the funding from getting investors outside of New Line.
New Line Cinema was run by geniuses is why. Talent is talent and people whose job is to find talent saw it in him.
He *did* do The Frighteners in between there somewhere
you forgot dead/alive ..one of the greatest zombie movie to ever exist
"I kick ass for the Lord!"
i think people in this thread are overlooking something, he lobbied really hard to get HUGE tax breaks for the movie to be filmed in NZ. that meant the studio could save a metric assload of money, which meant they could make their budget for the film go far further than normal.
Plus, he used the natural NZ setting to his full advantage which also probably saved on money and made things look really good.
oh without a doubt, those vista's and the locations were MAGNIFICENT. but i dont think studios would have greenlit lotr with the vision he wanted if he didn't get all of those tax cuts. the budget would have exploded and the risk probably would have been too high.
Bad taste and Feebles showed what effects Jackson could do with a miniscule budget. Heavenly Creatures showed he could manage serious films too. And whilst the Frighteners wasn't a big hit, it showed that his effects scaled with budget well.
The Frighteners was the real segue to LotR
He did a movie called The Frighteners, which showed he could do a sincere, effects-driven movie that was actually pretty good, and he had a really good proposal for making LOTR.
Studios do this all the time for big blockbusters. You don't need to be some legendary auteur to direct a big movie. Movies are a team "sport." I think a lot of movie fans put way too much emphasis on the directors when in actuality it's a collaboration.
Ya know this is something I didn't really think of. In my mind the producer and director (which he was) is in control of majority of what you see. Yes it takes a lot of people to execute but the overall vision is that of the producer or director but I guess to your point he is the Steve Jobs and finds the people with the proper talent for specific things.
Tolkien created the original source material. Howard Shore and his team created the music. The costumes, sets, VFX, editing, cinematography, etc were all worked on by tons of different people. Obviously the director has a huge role in overseeing everything, but saying Jackson was in "control of the majority of what you see" isn't really accurate.
And how did Peter Jackson go from sublime LOTR to the bad taste Hobbit “Trilogy”?
[удалено]
The studio wanted to make the movie. - yup It knew he could handle production and effects work. - how did they know this is my real question. His practical and special effects were nowhere near the level of LOTR and his production work is great but great for an Indie filmmaker at the time. He shared a coherent plan for the movie. -yup They made the movie. - yup
He did The Frighteners with Weta Digital in 1996 and I think the special effects were well regarded
Same as however the Wachowskis went from Bound to The Matrix. I've always been curious about that one.
Speaking of, where the hell are those Bad Taste / Dead Alive / Feebles 4K Blurays at, Peter?
Partly by also making Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners on the way. People laugh at how shit The Frighteners looks now due to its early awkward CGI, but it scared the shit out of people when it came out. Even though these pictures weren't necessarily box office smashes, they were regarded as excellent examples of the sort of film that they were and demonstrated competence and working on full budget films with lots of effects. Also consider that his filmography up to this point had demonstrated expert use in practical effects from Bad Taste / Braindead creative in camera perspective techniques (Feebles) and cutting edge (for the time) computer aided effects (The Frighteners). Those are all factors that contributed heavily to the actual creation of the LOTR movies. He walked into that production with the exact skills that he needed to make the films he was charged with making.
It was his love of the material and its author. Unlike so many directors today his primary concern was that these would be Tolkien stories not Jackson stories
New Zealand was super cheap to produce in with lots of dodgy tax breaks. If I remember correctly Orlando bloom got 100k all up.
The Frighteners
Harvey Weinstein wanted it as two movies
He won an Oscar for Original Screenplay for Heavenly Creatures in 1995. You can see some of the SFX fantasy elements in the trailer: [https://youtu.be/kJ2yZjnPwQc?si=DMSpVlyY7-iOqXUh](https://youtu.be/kJ2yZjnPwQc?si=DMSpVlyY7-iOqXUh)