Things You Didn’t Know About the Making of ‘Lord of the Rings’, Part Two

It almost wasn’t Jackson: Jackson thought one way to handle the trilogy would be to make “The Hobbit,” the prequel to the trilogy, first, and then make two films of the next three books. But rights issues meant that Saul Zaentz could only license “Lord of the Rings” to Harvey Weinstein, and not “The Hobbit.” When production costs started to rise, Harvey Weinstein tried to persuade Jackson to make a single “Lord of the Rings” film. Weinstein gave Jackson an ultimatum: “We had to either agree to do it or walk away,” Jackson recalled, “He already had John Madden lined up to direct, and Hossein Amini to write the script.”

But nobody was interested: Jackson returned to New Zealand to start working on a 35 minute “making of the making of” sample footage video, which would be shown to studios that expressed interest. But no major studios got the chance to see the footage — they all turned Jackson down. It came down to appointments with Polygram — the British independent studio whose Working Title label made “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — and New Line, on the same day Jackson was scheduled to fly back to New Zealand. New Line came through, after Weinstein negotiated an expensive buyout including an executive producer credit.

A whole new scale: It was a production of unprecedented scope: no filmmaker had ever made three films back to back before, or had as large a cast of crew and extras, or made every single prop from scratch. A production team of over 2,400 and 26,000 extras worked on the films for five years. The crew built 64 miniature sets, some so detailed that the larger ones were known as “bigatures.” Jackson decided that every single item in Middle-earth should be made from scratch. “I had to create the most believable world I could. The decision was to make it feel very historical, with the levels of detail creating the illusion that the viewers were immersing themselves in a real world,” said Jackson.

The search for Gandalf: New Line encouraged Jackson to cast Sean Connery as Gandalf, and though Jackson, a fan of Connery’s agreed, Connery turned them down. Ian McKellen was the next choice for the role of the wise wizard. But McKellan had committed to appear in “X-Men.” Bob Shaye ran into him at a London restaurant and told him “I was sorry to hear he was busy, because we had really wanted him. I went back to my table, and then a few minutes later, I decided to go back and ask, ‘Just for the record, what is the scheduling conflict?’ He said, ’Well, you’re starting ’Lord of the Rings’ three days before I finish ’X-Men.’ We did fix it of course, and that’s how he got in the movie.”

Not the right fit for Aragorn : The actor cast for the role of Aragorn, Stuart Townsend, was replaced after the first film was already three or four weeks into shooting. He was in nearly every scene, and they all needed to be re-shot. Producers felt the actor needed a little more gravitas, and decided to replace Townsend with Viggo Mortensen. “We had five days in which to find and cast the right person, make the deal and get him on a plane for New Zealand — for 15 months!” said executive producer Mark Ordesky. Mortensen, who is 14 years older than Townsend, seemed born to shoulder the role of the mysterious human warrior — it was even said he was living in the forest in Aragorn’s mud-stained clothes.

Source: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-making-of-backstory-business-1201936646/