Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy has become a classic among fantasy movies and his first (of three) Hobbit films was pretty darn good as well (diminishing returns set in quickly for those, though). Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated film also delivered an impressive and rather faithful version of the property, though it sadly never received the planned sequel to finish the story. But there were previous attempts to adapt those books to the big screen which few people know about, one of which would have starred the legendary rockers The Beatles.
Yes, the Fab Four themselves apparently loved the Middle Earth books and attempted to bring the story to the big screen back in the late 60s. Paul McCartney would have played Frodo and George Harrison would have taken the Gandalf role with Ringo Starr as Sam and John Lennon Gollum, and they would have scored the music for the film as well. They even approached Stanley Kubrick and asked him to direct the film. The director apparently considered it briefly but passed on the project as he felt that Tolkien’s books were too expansive (and expensive) to adapt at that time, claiming that the project was “unfilmable”. The Beatles apparently lost interest in pursuing the film after Kubrick bowed out (they also never received the approval from Tolkien) and they would instead go on to produce the animated classic The Yellow Submarine. The four would later infamously disband as a group by the end of the decade. But just imagine what sort of psychedelic 60s acid trip a Lord of the Rings, Beatles, and Stanley Kubrick collaboration would have brought us!
As an additional note on early attempts to adapt The Lord of the Rings, despite rumors, Disney never held the rights for Tolkien’s books because the author did not like what that company had done with previous film adaptations of fairy tales. But Tolkien did work with Forrest J. Ackerman among others in the late 50’s to develop a version that would have run three hours and would have included animation, miniatures, and live action. They could never get the script to a point that he would approve it, nor did he like the way they were doing the financing, so the project eventually died.
You can read more about other adaptations of The Lord of the Rings over at Wikipedia at this link.
Buy The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.
