How did Peter Jackson get the backing to do LoTR?

[Athena]

I’d never heard of him pre-LoTR. A quick check to IMDB.com shows that he made about 8 movies pre-LoTR. I’d seen one of them. None of them seemed to be anywhere near the level of cost or risk as LoTR.

So how did this relative no-name get a movie studio to give him the bazillion dollars it took to make LoTR? Was he more respected than his filmography suggests? Did he have someone’s love child? It just doesn’t seem to fit.

[lissener]

Peter Jackson was not a relative no name to anyone who’s seen more than just the thumbsuppers at the local Googleplex. Most of his films had a good critical reputation, and decent commerical success for their scale.

Plus, in those earlier movies, ALL of them, he proved that he was that rarest kind of director: a director who could handle high-end special effects, but would not give his movie over to them as most directors do. In a Jackson movie, special effects serve the plot, not the viceversa of practically everyone else (with the exception of Dead Alive, but that’s on purpose: it’s basically a satire ABOUT special effects).

[Miller]

A wizard did it.

[Cervaise]

He got really, really, really lucky.

He had Miramax’s backing for a two-movie version (if you thought the purists were howling now…), and when he got put into turnaround, he already had an excellent presentation to shop around. New Line signed on almost exclusively on the basis of this presentation.

Then, once things were rolling in production, one of New Line’s executives went to visit the worksite, and in touring PJ’s facilities, he realized based on the wall posters that PJ had never directed anything with a budget over ten million dollars, and half of them were even-cheaper-than-that zombie splatsploitation flicks, and he said to himself: Oh God, what have we done?

What they did, of course, was get really, really lucky. As did PJ. On almost every level, these movies are simply miraculous. In the end, they’re miracles for not sucking, but prior to that it’s a miracle they got made at all, and it’s a double miracle that PJ was the one to do them.

[Rashak_Mani]

They certainly took a risk with him… and thank god they did.

Tired of seeing big budget films that suck suck suck. I think overall studios are too cautious and too meddlesome… which usually results in median movies or in movies that have been edited and fudged beyond reason.

Give me a film with a good story instead of only special effects and it shall suceed...

[Sublight]

I knew of Peter Jackson before LOTR from Meet the Feebles and The Frighteners, and while enjoyed both of them immensely, he wouldn’t have been my choice if I’d been the guy deciding who to invest X-hundred million dollars in.

I was wondering this even more when I started looking at the past work of the cast. Elijah Wood’s got a bunch of cute kid films. John Rhys-Davies has a long history of B-movies and second banana roles (including Never Say Mind: The Swedish Bikini Team). Viggo Mortensen’s been in some B-action movies (including a role in Black Velvet Pantsuit as “Worthless Junkie”). Orlando who?

But somehow they did it.

[Wumpus]

The answer is (predictably) a lot of hard work and a little luck.

The hard work: From the begininng, Jackson always had a clear goal in mind–not making LOTR as such, but being able to make Hollywood-scale movies in his home of New Zealand.

Everything he did during the 90s was aimed at that goal: making a successful low-budget art house flick (Heavenly Creatures) to get his foot in the door in Hollywood, setting up Weta, and agreeing to make an unexceptional comedy/effects picture (Frighteners) to show US studios that he could make movies quickly and cheaply in NZ.

Frighteners didn’t do much at the box office, but it proved to the studio (Universal) that Jackson and the New Zealanders could do good work for very little money. So they gave him the go-ahead to start work on his dream project–King Kong.

Jackson did preproduction work on Kong for a while. Then Universal pulled out, saying that they didn’t want to go up against Godzilla.

Jackson, however, already had a plan B worked out in advance: LOTR. He approached Miramax films, which owned the rights to the books, and gave them a detailed pitch. Miramax somewhat hesitantly agreed to make LOTR, but as two pictures, not three.

Then Miramax reneged on even that. They said that Jackson could either shop the project around to other studios (with Miramax getting a share of the profits) or else make a one picture version for Miramax.

Then came the luck: Jackson naturally opted to shop LOTR around. New Line, a smaller studio better known for cheap horror movies than big budget epics, rather astonishingly agreed to make all three movies at once. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Why Jackson and not Lucas or Spielberg or Cameron or Scott or any of the countless others who are better known for big budget effects movies? Because Jackson had done what the brighter lights of Hollywood had deemed impossible in the past: he had figured out ways to make LOTR into a movie at a reasonable cost.
Both Jackson’s and New Line’s horror backgrounds gave them an understanding of how to make movies on lower budgets than is the norm in Hollywood.

(Of course, low budget is relative–ROTL “only” cost $130-150 million, whereas if it were done in the usual Hollywood manner it probably would have cost $200-$220 mill)

[RickJay]

I’m not sure that New Line really took that much of a risk. Whether or not the movies were going to make back the investment in the theatre was never an issue; even a lousy blockbuster can make $100 million, times three and that’s what they spent, and you would expect a blockbuster with such a huge name would draw enormous crowds. You just cannot miss, commercially, with Lord of the Rings movies. They would have at least broken even, even if they’d sucked as bad as Ralph Bakshi’s version.

The risk was that the movies would get made. Some movies go hopelessly over time and budget; hell, Michael Cimono destroyed a whole studio that way. But Jackson did have a reputation for being a budget-conscious and time-conscious director, a director who knew his business. He put a winning proposal together. It was a very smart business move, IMHO, not really that risky at all.

The decision to use mostly B- and C-level actors was a smart business move. They simply did not need any more stars for this movie. The movie already had a HUGE star, a star bigger than Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Clark Gable combined: J.R.R. Tolkein. His fan base guaranteed a huge turnout. They just needed some competent supporting faces.

[Equipoise]

Shortly after Fellowship came out, Peter Jackson was a guest on the Charlie Rose show. It was a fascinating hour-long interview (later repeated though edited down to a half-hour). The entire interview transcript is here and is worth reading, but in reference to this question, or at least, how the movies got made, here’s a particularly interesting section. It seems long but it reads pretty fast.

PETER JACKSON: There’s a long story behind that. I’ll try to give you the short version of the long story, if you like, the history of it, because it is very interesting. I mean, people don’t realize really how close this film came to not happening at all.

It was originally a Miramax production. We started developing it with Miramax in about 1996, you know, inquired about the rights in '95. Saul Zaentz had the right to become its producer.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Made English Patient.

PETER JACKSON: English Patient. And we called Harvey Weinstein and said to Harvey, you know, We'd love to-- love to do this.'' We had the first look deal with Miramax, which meant we had to take any project [unintelligible] gone to them. So we called up Harvey and said, We’d love to do this.’’

He said, ``Who’s got the rights?’’

And we said, ``Saul Zaentz.’’

And he said, ``Well, that’s great because I’m making The English Patient with Saul right now, and he owes me a big favor because The English Patient was’’–

CHARLIE ROSE: About not to be made.

PETER JACKSON: --made-- and then Harvey stepped [unintelligible] So that was our first piece of great luck is that Harvey happened to be working with Saul–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

PETER JACKSON: --and so had the rights. So that legal stuff happened, and the rights became-- you know, became available to Harvey. And so we started to develop it with Harvey. We pitched the idea of three films, and Miramax didn’t really want to take that risk.

But we agreed on two, two Lord of the Rings films, you know, two-and-a-half hours make five hours total, which we thought we could-- we could adapt the book, the three books, in that way.

So we did the screenplays. We developed them over the course of about two years. At the same time as writing the scripts, Miramax were also putting a lot of money into, basically, pre-production on the film.

We hired a team of 30 or 40 people. We were designing the movie. We were location scouting. We had visual effects being done. We had monsters being made. Computer work was happening. A lot of money was spent. In fact, it was about $20 million got spent during this time.

And the we ran into a real snag because by the time we’d finished writing the screenplays and doing a lot of the development, we were able to come up with a much more definitive budget of what it was going to spend, and that was going to-- at that point, these two movies were going to cost about $130 million, $140 million to make.

And Harvey said, ``Well, I have-- I only have an ability to go up to $75 million on a film.’’

And of course, Disney owns his company. So I understand. I’m not entirely certain, but I do understand that Harvey went to Disney and he asked permission to spend extra money to make these two films and was refused that permission.

So Harvey was in a real jam, and he turned to us and said, Look,'' you know, I’ve got a problem. I just cannot go ahead with these two films. So why don’t we just make one?’’

And we said, So you want us to make the first one first and release it,'' which is sort of the common-sense approach, and then if it’s successful, we’ll go and make the second.’’

And he said, ``Well, no, no. I just want to make one Lord of the Rings films, so we’ve got to figure out a way to lose all the story and to compress it all into one movie.’’

So we didn’t really feel comfortable with that at all. In fact, we just felt it was a recipe for disaster, that anybody that had read the book that went along to a movie titled The Lord of the Rings was just going to be-- was going to be disappointed, was going to be shocked at what this two-hour version–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Right.

PETER JACKSON: --was actually going to be like. And we just said, ``Why would you do that when it was guaranteed to disappoint?’’

But anyway, Harvey had no real choice, and he said, ``This is the only thing I can do.’’

So, at that point, we literally walked away from the project, and we said to Harvey, We can't be involved in this anymore.'' And we'd been on it for two years. So it was a fairly-- we were over-- we were over here in New York and had this-- had this rather gruesome meeting at the Miramax office and just said, Look,’’ you know, ``we can’t be involved.’’

And Harvey said-- I mean, he understood. It was like we were both in a jam. And Harvey’s heart was always in the right place, but he couldn’t-- he had nowhere to do.

And so we got on the plane back to New Zealand. It’s, like, a 20-hour flight. And we felt now that we’d come to the end of The Lord of the Rings, which was a tragedy. It’s-- Because you put so much emotional investment into these things when you work on them for so long.

And our agent, Kim Kemmens [sp], in the meantime, while we were flying that 20 hours back to New Zealand, he’d called Harvey, and he said, Look,'' you know, Peter and Fran,’’ who’s my-- who’s my partner, ``they’ve been working on this for two years, Harvey. You’ve got to give them at least a chance to take this somewhere else. If you can’t do it, there may be someone who can.’’

And so Harvey-- because Harvey was prepared to hire other filmmakers to make a single-film version because Harvey had spent $20 million, and he wasn’t able just to kill it. He was now going to have to find someone else to do his movie so he could at least get-- get his investment back.

And so Harvey said, ``OK, there’s-- there’s two conditions. One, it’s got to be-- it’s got to be the two films. Somebody’s got to agree to do two films because I’m offering to do one, so somebody’s got to agree to the two. The second condition is if somebody wants to do it, they’ve got to write me-- they’ve got four weeks from now to write me a $20 million check.’’

So we were now faced with the job of having to go to L.A., to Hollywood, and try and convince somebody to write Harvey a $20 million check and finance two Lord of the Rings movies. So we were in-- we arrived in New Zealand with this news, and we had four weeks.

And so we had all this visual material, all our designs, our creatures. We had a lot of stuff. And rather than just go into a Hollywood office and just, like, do a verbal pitch, we thought we’ve got to make use of all this wonderful visual material that we have because it was-- it was pretty amazing.

And so we decided to make a documentary because-- and so for the first week of our-- of our four, we got a video team in. We interviewed ourselves, you know, talking about The Lord of the Rings. It was like The Making of The Lord of the Rings–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. [unintelligible]

PETER JACKSON: --before it got made, you know?

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Right. Right.

PETER JACKSON: But the interesting thing in that tape is that-- is that we’re all trying to sit there and be really positive and confident.

And I’m being interviewed, and I’m saying, ``You know, the most wonderful thing about Tolkien’s story is that’’-- but we’re all dying inside because this is, like, the project that’s going to-- unless this works, it’s all over. And we’re hoping and we’re-- but we’re trying to not show that, and we’re all-- you know, and so we did all this lovely photography of these-- these monsters, where we turn them [unintelligible] tables and lighting them. And we did [unintelligible] ended up being 36 minutes long. And so then we got-- then in week number two, we go to L.A. and we-- we now have to hit Hollywood with our-- with our videotape and try and get someone to do this.

And by the time we arrive in L.A., our agent has gone through every studio, every producer who could possibly raise money, and he’s virtually been turned down by everybody, even without seeing the tape, without meeting us. People just said, No, we don't want to do it.'' You know, The Lord of the Rings, two movies, $20 million check to Harvey-- no, no, no, no, no.’’

And by the time we arrive in L.A., there were only two meetings. There were only two people who wanted to even meet with us. Everyone else had passed. And the first one was Polygram, who saw our tape and they loved it, and they said, ``Look, we-- this is fantastic. We really, really want to-- want to do it.’’

And we thought, ``Great. Great.’’

And then they said, But our company''-- this was in 1998. And they said, But our company is being sold.’’ Polygram was now being-- it was up for sale.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

PETER JACKSON: And they said, There's no way we could do this until the sale process is complete.'' And we said, Well, we’ve got, like, you know, two-and-a-half weeks. How quickly is it going to get sold?’’

And they said, ``Oh, no. It’s going to be months and months away.’’

So we walked out the door. That was a no go.

CHARLIE ROSE: And one last shot.

PETER JACKSON: New Line. New Line Cinema was our last shot, who had agreed to have a meeting. And at this point, we were-- we were worried that we were going to be known as this failure. So with New Line, we tried to create the impression that we were really busy taking meetings.

And so you know, we had this one meeting that-- like, we’d phone up New Line and say, ``Meeting-- meeting at New Line 10 o’clock. No, no, no. We can’t do 10. We’ve got a meeting. No, one o’clock? No, we’re busy at one. How about 3:30?’’ And we tried to create this impression that we were kind of really being sought after and we were going to-- we-- I mean, it was terrible.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you had nothing.

PETER JACKSON: But we had nothing, no.

So we turn up-- we turn up at our New Line meeting, and Mark Ordesky, you know, who’s an executive at New Line, who-- who-- who was an old friend of mine, in actual fact-- and I knew that he was a huge The Lord of the Rings fan. Mark had set it up, and Mark was-- Mark was really excited about the idea of doing this.

And I met Bob Shay, who I’d known earlier, and Bob is a really straight guy. So you know, we knew we’d get-- you know, we’d get some sense from Bob of what he-- he was going to do. So we sat down.

He had a private meeting with me first, and he said, ``Look, Peter, I just want to-- before I see your tape, I just want you to know that if we don’t do this, I want you to know that you’re always welcome to bring projects to me in the future.’’

So I thought, ``Oh, well, this is the classic kind of’’–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, right. He’s setting you up for the fall.

PETER JACKSON: He’s setting me up for the fall.

So we went in and we put the tape in, and we-- and he plays-- and he just sits there, completely silently, just watches it. And we’re just nervous. We can’t stand it. He’s in the-- we’re in the same room as he is, and he’s just watching and watching for 36 minutes.

And as the tape comes to an end, he says, ``I don’t get it.’’

And I thought, ``OK.’’

And he turns and he says, ``I don’t get it. Why would you be wanting to do two The Lord of the Rings films? It’s three books, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be three films?’’

And I thought, ``What’s he-- what’s he saying here? What’s he-- what’s he saying here?’’

And he said-- he said, ``Look, we’re interested’’–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

PETER JACKSON: --``but we’re basically interested in three movies.’’ And it was-- [crosstalk]

CHARLIE ROSE: I hope you got up and went over and kissed him.

PETER JACKSON: Well, I felt like hugging him, yeah.

I mean, it was unbelievable. And now, you know, these sorts of stories don’t really happen.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

PETER JACKSON: They’re not–

CHARLIE ROSE: So you left there saying, ``I’m going to make three movies. We’re going to go back to New Zealand’’–

PETER JACKSON: We went back to New Zealand. Miramax and New Line lawyers got hammering it out.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

PETER JACKSON: Harvey got his check.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

PETER JACKSON: And we were–

CHARLIE ROSE: Plus he got 5 percent, too, didn’t he?

PETER JACKSON: We were on board. Yeah, that-- Harvey’s done fine.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the title is executive producer or something like–

PETER JACKSON: Yeah. Well, he deserves it. I mean, Harvey was there at the very beginning and gave us a lot of support when we needed it. So it-- you know, it sort of-- everybody’s come out OK.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. So all of a sudden, it’s a go. You’re going to–

PETER JACKSON: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: --spend how much money for three movies?

PETER JACKSON: Well, at that point, you see, we only had budgets for two movies. So then we had to write-- rewrite the script.

So we had to throw out our scripts, and we had to rewrite the scripts because the scripts for three films is a very different structure to two. So that was a-- it was another 18 months. I mean, this is now getting into 1999. They budget out at-- they ended up budgeting out at $270 million because we were able to put a whole lot more stuff back into the movies that we’d cut out.

And then, you know-- and we went into-- basically, into production in October, 1999, to shoot all three movies, $270 million budget, 274 shooting days. And we got going.

(interview continues)

Really, this whole LOTR-movie story is one of the most interesting stories ever to come out of Hollywood. It’s the kind of thing that the executives, the filmmakers, the cast, crew, fans and pundits will tell their grandkids about. That the movies ended up being so darned good, and critically and commercially popular…it’s a fairy tale!

Yes, Return of the King and Peter Jackson deserve Academy Awards. It has to have them to top this whole thing off.

[Kizarvexius]

Far and away the smartest thing that PJ did was recruiting John Howe and Alan Lee to be his prodcution designers. These guys have spent years reading and re-reading Tolkien, and their illustrations have formed the foundation of the way so many fans “see” Middle Earth. By tapping into their expertise and vast body of work, he ensured that the “look” of the film would live up to viewers’ expectations.

[Headcoat]

So I assume Miramax and Disney are kind of…disappointed at their lack of commitment to this project?

[Thorongil]

Thanks for the transcript excerpt Equipoise. That was a very interesting read.

Even though Miramax is getting a small percentage of the profits, you know they have to be kicking themselves for not making the movies. They could have made a ton of money. I wonder how much sleep Harvey has lost over this.

I sure hope New Line gave Mark Ordesky a raise.