John, Paul, George and Frodo? Peter Jackson on The Beatles’ failed attempt to make the movie LOTR

Peter Jackson is getting a lot of media attention after his epic 8 hour Beatles documentary, Understand NSack. However, fans of the director may be surprised that he has a different relationship with the Fab Four. Years before the much-loved adaptation of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings began filming, The Beatles attempted to make a live adaptation on their own. Only rejected by JRR Tolkien himself.

According to Jackson, the attempt was made in 1968, just two years before the band disbanded after their producer Denis O’Dell sent the members copies of the book while they were on hiatus. in India. According to Jackson, “I expected because there were three books, he sent one book to each of the Beatles,” Jackson said. “I don’t think Ringo has one, but John, Paul, and George each have one Lord of the Rings books to read in india. And they are very excited about it. ”

The musicians became so excited about the work that they began planning to make it into a movie. Oddly enough, they didn’t choose actors that were clearly portraying the four main Hobbit characters. McCartney is expected to play Frodo and Ringo will be Samwise but Lennon really has the eyes to portray Gollum. George (ironically the youngest of the four) plays the old wizard, Gandalf.

While arrangements were being made to secure the rights and start the project (obviously, Stanley Kubrick was the band’s top choice to direct) this idea was completely rejected by the author himself. . Tolkien, then 76 years old and a retired English professor, wasn’t particularly interested in the idea of ​​pop stars, even the most famous pop stars in the world, portraying characters. in his works. Indeed, no film or television adaptation of his work has been revealed by the author, and many of the final works that have been made happen after completion.

One wonders what the Lord of the Rings cast of four of the most influential musicians of all time might look like, and what it actually sounds like. Jackson praised their efforts. “They tried to do that. There is no doubt about that. For a moment, they were seriously thinking about doing it in early 1968.”

While we’ll never see Beatles LOTR, fans can still watch Jackson’s Get Back stream on the Disney Plus platform. Gathered from 60 hours of incredible raw footage, the documentary features never-before-seen scenes of the group composing the fourteen songs that will be featured on their final album, as well as a rooftop concert featuring their iconography on Savile Row in London.