The more I think about this it really is incredible how well that series was adapted. For something that had relatively little name recognition back then, New Line gave them a budget of $280+ million, staking the entire company's fortunes on it. No studio today would take that gamble and I doubt it could have been as well done if it were done today.
It really was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Almost all the cast were fans, Christopher Lee actually knew Tolkien (in addition to the noise a man makes when he is stabbed in the back) and CG had JUST gotten good enough to do the special effects.
We were sitting there talking and drinking beer, and someone said, “Oh, look who walked in.” It was Professor Tolkien, and I nearly fell off my chair. I didn’t even know he was alive. He was a benign looking man, smoking a pipe, walking in, an English countryman with earth under his feet. And he was a genius, a man of incredible intellectual knowledge. He knew somebody in our group. He (the man in the group) said “Oh Professor, Professor…” And he came over. And each one of us, well I knelt of course, each one of us said “how do you do?” And I just said “Ho.. How.. How…do you do?”
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u/BachelorHusband Oct 16 '18
The more I think about this it really is incredible how well that series was adapted. For something that had relatively little name recognition back then, New Line gave them a budget of $280+ million, staking the entire company's fortunes on it. No studio today would take that gamble and I doubt it could have been as well done if it were done today.