Peter Jackson isn’t involved with Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings TV series because the studio basically ghosted him.
This is what the legendary director behind the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies seems to be claiming, having told The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters in an upcoming The Business podcast about how Amazon initially promised to send him scripts but ultimately never followed through. Jackson suggested something similar in an older exchange with Scott Feinberg on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, in which he revealed that Amazon asked him if he wanted to be involved and teased that it’ d be sending scripts over “as soon” as they were available.
Apparently, Amazon Studios was not serious and wanted to completely distance itself from the guy responsible for New Line’s hugely successful movies.
“About four, five years ago, they asked if I would be interested in it,” Jackson said. “So I said, ‘Have you got the scripts yet?’ Because I know how hard the scripts were to write for the films, and I didn’t know the people writing their scripts. They said, ‘Oh no, we haven’t got the scripts yet, but as soon as we do, we’ll send you the scripts.’ So I was waiting for the scripts to arrive, and they never did.”
Jackson doesn’t seem to have any hard feelings toward Amazon and its new Lord of the Rings series, however, having confirmed that he’ll be tuning in to the show.
“I’ll be watching it,” he says. “I’m not the sort of guy who wishes ill will. Filmmaking is hard enough. If somebody makes a good film or TV show, it’s something to celebrate. The one thing I am looking forward to is actually seeing it as a perfectly neutral viewer.”
Amazon Studios has responded to Jackson’s comments with the following statement, noting that it still greatly respects the filmmaker:
In pursuing the rights for our show, we were obligated to keep the series distinct and separate from the films. We have the utmost respect for Peter Jackson and The Lord of The Rings films and are thrilled that he is looking forward to watching The Rings of Power.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere on Prime Video on September 2, 2022. Amazon Studios has described its new streaming series as an epic drama that is set “thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.”
Peter Jackson’s most recent project is The Beatles: Get Back, a docuseries that traces the making of the iconic band’s 1970 album Let It Be. The director is also working on a new Tintin movie called The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham’s Treasure, according to iMDB.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter