The Beatles were reportedly knocked back by J.R.R Tolkien after trying to create their own “Lord of The Rings” film.
The famous foursome reportedly put forth the idea of a “Lord of The Rings” screen adaptation way back in 1968.
The news was disclosed by notorious filmmaker Peter Jackson, who is most famous for his trilogy based on Tolkien’s fantasy series, “Lord of The Rings”.
Funnily enough, Jackson is currently on the road promoting his latest project “The Beatles: Get Back,” a series of never-before-seen film footage of the band recording their final album.
During an interview with the BBC, Jackson revealed the band’s desire to create the film back in the 60s, 20 years after the books release.
“I’ve been scraping together little pieces of information. I’ve been interrogating Paul about it. Ringo doesn’t remember much,” Jackson said.
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The band were supposedly delivered copies of the novels by their producer and friend, Denis O’Dell, during their visit to India in the late 60s.
“John, Paul and George each got one Lord of The Rings Books to read in India. And they got excited about it,” said Jackson.
Poor Ringo missed out on a slice of the trilogy action but has surely put down the sticks and caught up by now.
When the band presented their ideas to the author himself, Tolkien did not wanna hold their hands…reluctant on tossing big-screen rights to a boy band.
“Ultimately, they couldn’t get the rights from Tolkien, because he didn’t like the idea of a pop group doing his story. So it got nixed by him. They tried to do it. There’s no doubt about it. For a moment in time, they were seriously contemplating doing that at the beginning of 1968.”
In an alternate universe the BBC reports that we could have seen, Paul McCartney as Frodo, John Lennon as Gollum, George Harrison as Gandalf, and Ringo Starr as Sam (assuming he read up on the character in time).
It’s been revealed that the Beatles wanted to make a musical film version of The Lord of the Rings. However, the idea was firmly stamped on by J.R.R. Tolkien, who did not like the idea of a pop group being let loose on his Middle-earth trilogyhttps://t.co/fV2oiMsR0f
— The Times (@thetimes) November 25, 2021
Director of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Stanley Kubrick, would have been the boy’s choice of director.
The trilogy was later adapted to film by Peter Jackson and famously shot in New Zealand through the year 2000.
Since then ‘Lord of The Rings’ has become one of the world most famous film series, earning close to $3 billion in box office sales.
Here’s to hoping “The Beatles: Get Back” encounters a similar success.
