Back in 1995, Peter Jackson started looking for a project to show off the expanded digital-effects capacities he and his colleagues had built up for The Frighteners. With what at the time was naive optimism, they settled on The Lord of the Rings and set out to track down who had the production rights for it. Those rights belonged to producer Saul Zaentz, who was not inclined to sell them to anyone, let alone a little-known director from New Zealand.
Peter and company had, however, one advantage. Having distributed his 1994 film Heavenly Creatures through Miramax, Peter had an in with that art-film company and its co-founders, Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Indeed, he was required to give them an option on his next film. Through a happy coincidence, Zaentz owed Miramax a big favor, since the company had rescued his project The English Patient when Fox abruptly pulled the plug on its financing just before shooting began. After much negotiation with Zaentz, Harvey Weinstein acquired the trilogy’s rights, agreeing to produce a two-part adaptation of Tolkien’s novel with Peter to direct.
In retrospect, it seems impossible to believe that fans would have been satisfied with two features, especially when such elements as Galadriel and Lothlórien would have been left out entirely. But that version of the film went through 18 months of pre-production at Miramax.
Miramax was not a free agent, having been bought by Disney in 1993. In 1998 Michael Eisner, then head of Disney, declared that LOTR would be made as one inexpensive feature-length film or not at all. Peter declined to go forward and persuaded Harvey to put the film into turnaround for a few weeks, giving him a chance to try and sell the project to a different studio. Only one studio was interested, but that one was New Line, whose founder Bob Shaye wanted LOTR made as three features. The price was 5% of the trilogy’s revenues. Eisner had so little faith in the proposed adaptation, that he split the 5% between Disney and the Weinsteins!
(I tell this story in more detail in the first chapter of The Frodo Franchise.)
The Weinsteins subsequently left Miramax to form The Weinstein Company, probably in part using their considerable income from the trilogy. Their best-known recent film is Inglourious Basterds.
On Wednesday The Wrap announced that Disney is closing Miramax. Some of the firm’s important films, like Pulp Fiction and sex, lies, and videotape are mentioned, but there’s no reference to its key role in allowing LOTR to get made. After the Weinsteins’ departure, Miramax was a shadow of its former self, but it still had employees (80 have lost their jobs) and films scheduled to be released (six remain in limbo). Disney claims that the brand will not disappear, but it’s hard to imagine what they could do with it at this point.
