Harvey Weinstein Threatened to Replace Peter Jackson with Quentin Tarantino for The Lord of the Rings

Believe it not, Harvey Weinstein allegedly threatened to replace Peter Jackson with Quentin Tarantino for The Lord of the Rings when the project was at Miramax (run by Harvey and Bob Weinstein at the time).

The Weinsteins were originally supportive of Jackson’s vision for the book series. However, Peter Jackson’s manager, Ken Kamins, recently told The Independent that Harvey changed his tune and eventually demanded that Jackson find a way to get all the material into one movie, and if he didn’t, he’d bring in Quentin Tarantino to direct.

“Harvey would go from acting empathetically to turning on a dime into Mr Hyde and would threaten Peter. He’d threaten to get Quentin Tarantino to direct if Peter couldn’t do it in one film that was two-and-a-half-hours – which was the exact opposite of what he initially told us he wanted. Eventually, I go to Harvey and say, ‘You have to give us a window to shop it.'”

Who knows if Tarantino was ever seriously considered to direct the project, or if this was an idle threat by Weinstein. The Weinsteins were in a tough spot at the time, as Disney (the owners of Miramax) had put a cap on how much Miramax could spend, and the plan for the Lord of the Rings films far exceeded that. This led to Harvey telling Jackson that he could shop the project around to other studios, but that if they found a deal, he’d still get 5% of the total gross. The films ended up being sold to New Line where the project was turned into a trilogy and went on to earn massive amounts of money, with 5% and an executive producer credit going to Harvey.