Why Stanley Kubrick Turned Down The Beatles’ ‘Lord of the Rings’ Adaptation
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is nearly perfect, and it’s impossible to imagine anyone doing it better. However, The Beatles were fans of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work and wanted to star in a film adaptation. The plans ultimately fell through when director Stanley Kubrick turned it down, and Tolkien refused to allow The Beatles to make it.
The Beatles wanted to play Hobbits in a ‘Lord of the Rings’ adaptation
The Beatles succeeded on the big screen with A Hard Day’s Night and Help!. However, Lord of the Rings would have been a completely different task that required skilled acting and hardcore determination. The Beatles read the novels in the late 1960s and became entranced by Middle Earth.
In Ian Nathan’s book Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth, the author shares that The Beatles already had a movie deal with United Artists, and pitched a concept for a Lord of the Rings adaptation. Jackson asked McCartney about it at an Oscar event after Return of the King won several awards. McCartney confirmed the project was in development, and the fab four knew who they would play.
“Paul was going to play Frodo, George was going to play Gandalf, John was Gollum, and Ringo was Sam, I think,” Jackson said. “And he said that they all showed up at Stanley Kubrick’s house to try and persuade him to be the director. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that.”
The Beatles asked Stanley Kubrick to direct, but he turned it down
Stanley Kubrick is a legendary director behind classic films like A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. Directing The Beatles in a Lord of the Rings adaptation wouldn’t seem like his specialty, and he appeared to think so. John Lennon and the others visited Kubrick to see if he would helm their journey to Middle Earth, but Kubrick showed little interest and had other plans.
“Kubrick, with four Liverpudlian superstars standing on his doorstop uninvited, did the decent thing and asked them in for tea,” Nathan wrote. “He listened to their offer, was very polite, but admitted it wasn’t for him. He was in the middle of planning a colossal life of Napoleon, which would eventually be scuppered when MGM decided that epics were no longer commercial.”
J. R. R. Tolkien killed the project
While Kubrick was The Beatles’ top choice, they never asked another director because Tolkien nixed the Lord of the Rings project. In an interview with BBC, Jackson said Tolkien killed it because he didn’t like the idea of musicians being attached to his work.
“Ultimately, they couldn’t get the rights from Tolkien because he didn’t like the idea of a pop group doing his story. So it got nixed by him. They tried to do it. There’s no doubt about it. For a moment in time, they were seriously contemplating doing that at the beginning of 1968.”
While a Beatles version of this classic story would have been fascinating, it’s ultimately for the best that it never happened. The Beatles weren’t great actors, and they were too recognizable. It would’ve looked like a group of rock stars playing dress-up. However, it would have had an outstanding soundtrack.
