

When he made his early horror movies, Bad Taste, Dead Alive, and Meet The Feebles, he was launching them like one blood-soaked Hail Mary after another out into the larger world.Ģ021 marks The Lord of the Rings movies' 20th anniversary, and we couldn't imagine exploring the trilogy in just one story. Growing up in New Zealand, he felt like he was a million miles from Hollywood. Jackson began his career as a fiercely independent artist, not by design but by necessity. Tolkien’s books produced by Peter Jackson was such an unlikely prospect in the first place. This story, of how Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King came to be the films that we know, is the movie business in a nutshell.Īn adaptation of J.R.R. I may be one of the few people outside of Jackson’s production company, WingNut Films, to have ever read that version of the project, which would have compacted the action told in 558 minutes into two-thirds of that runtime.

In the case of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it’s amazing how many moving parts there were in the process that eventually resulted in Peter Jackson’s three films - which were nearly a two-movie project. Staying afloat means developing 10 things and praying to god at least one of them actually gets made.Įven films that eventually get made can go through several incarnations before that happens.

It’s why so many films get announced then never happen. One of the great painful truths of working inside the system is that filmmakers can build entire careers out of developing material and selling work without having anything to show the ticket-buying public. Hollywood careers are like icebergs, and the movies you actually see are just the tip breaking through the surface.
