He was crazy about that story and he was nuts about 200. When asked who it was that was leading the campaign, Vitali responded: It was just an exchange of information and people were interested in doing it.

Yes, it was something that they came up with. I don’t think it was quite in Stanley Kubrick’s ballpark, that idea. They came to Stanley’s office to talk about it. In a 2018 interview with Metro, Kubrick’s former right-hand man, Leon Vitali, was asked about the long-standing rumor and if there was any truth to the matter: (Image credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) John Lennon Approached Stanley Kubrick To Direct The Adaptation, But He Wasn’t InterestedĪt some point after The Beatles decided they wanted to make LOTR into a movie, the band reportedly approached Stanley Kubrick to see if he had any interest in directing the sprawling epic.

Nevertheless, Lennon had the perfect candidate, or so he thought. Though the band reportedly had their sights on who each of them would be playing in their Lord of the Rings movie, they would also need to bring on a director capable of turning a trilogy that was in the ballpark of 1,200 words into a single movie. And I guess if you had to have Gollum, and you had the four Beatles, John Lennon is the obvious one. Take Gandalf, George, the mystic magician, it’s perfect – you’d have to age him up a bit. … Look, they cast themselves and they did it right. Nearly 20 years later, when appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jackson, who was promoting The Beatles: Get Back at the time, was asked to come up with his ideal casting, saying he would stick to the group’s original plan:

In March 2002, hot off the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson told Wellington’s Evening Post newspaper (via CNN), that while McCartney and Starr reportedly set their sights on playing Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, respectively, the other two members would have taken much different roles: Lennon would have reportedly played Gollum and Harrison would have taken on the role of Gandalf. One would assume that The Beatles would have wanted to play the four Hobbits at the center of The Lord of the Rings, but that would only be half correct. (Image credit: New Line Cinema) Paul McCartney Reportedly Wanted To Play Frodo Baggins While John Lennon Wanted To Play Gollum

The beatles tell me why