"Another Reason to Love Tolkien" Topic

Mind you, I have not fact-checked this: link

Ron

Sorry, but when you sell the rights, you sign away the rights to influence the production.
The way I read the story elsewhere, they just couldn't get financing.

I do not know if Tolkien in fact disliked the Beatles, but I do know that the passing whim the Fab Four had toward acquiring the rights to LOTR and making this a Beatles flick didn't progress very far at all, and prompted more empty speculation than serious pre-production work. I doubt this even lasted as long as their momentary enthusiasm for buying that island in Greece in 1967 and setting up a commune/studio for themselves and their families and retainers.

I've never heard JRRT disliked The Beatles specifically, but he certainly loathed both rock and hippies, so they might well have been included under that umbrella.

Remember hearing about this back in the day but as a passing rumor.

Considering the Bakshi effort as the state of the art at the time, doubt it would have gone well.

The Beatles doing Tolkien – "The Horror".

But, down in the comments is a link to a write up on the Boorman LOTR script.

link

Well worth the read.

Did some reading of these discussion board comments. If this 1970 Boorman script is legit -- it sounds dreadful. (And this is long before ZARDOZ!)

This script and arrangement with United Artists also post-dates the time the Beatles expressed possible interest in the project.

Having read the commentary on the Boorman script, all I can think is that we got off lucky.

Boorman Gandalf?

Hey I won't hear a bad word said about Nicol Williamson's Merlin, okay? ;)

Agreed! Nicol made Excalibur!