Compared to other blockbuster action-adventure series like Harry Potter or Star Wars that have shared similar critical and commercial success, the Lord of the Rings franchise is actually fairly small, consisting of just nine movies, a few video games, and an upcoming Amazon Prime television series.
However, several unfinished or canceled attempts to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien's work, whether for a movie, a video game, or something else, have happened since his first best-selling novel, The Hobbit, was published in 1937. Here's a brief history of all those forgotten projects, the people behind them, and how far they went before finally being dropped.
10 Disney's Lord Of The Rings
At one point, Walt Disney was interested in making an animated version of The Hobbit, with one of his animators suggesting imagery from the story could be incorporated into Fantasia. This idea never really materialized.
According to one of Disney's "Nine Old Men," Wolfgang Reitherman, there were later attempts to adapt Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings instead, but Disney felt the project lacked the sufficient amount of humor necessary for an animated film, and the project was scrapped.
9 The Zimmerman Treatment
One of the more curious attempts at turning Tolkien's work into a screenplay, Morton Grady Zimmerman's 55-page treatment is notable solely because it's one of the few attempts Tolkien actually seriously considered. Though he found serious issues with some divergences from the source, the film's concept art intrigued Tolkien.
Eventually, however, the project failed to secure a producer, and Zimmerman ended his brief foray into the world of film-making. His script currently resides in the Tolkien Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
8 Lord Of The Rings Starring The Beatles
Apparently, even the Beatles wanted in on Lord of the Rings mania. Having already completed the films A Hard Day's Night and Help! for United Artists, they had their eyes on the studio's LOTR rights.
Eventually, a pitch was conceived for a movie that would star the four Beatles as the four Hobbits, but, despite some back-and-forth between the Beatles and Stanley Kubrick, the project ended up going nowhere. At any rate, the Beatles' final film for UA would be the Academy-Award-winning concert documentary Let it Be.
7 The Lord Of The Rings: Journey To Rivendell
The Parker Brothers game The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Rivendell was intended to be released on the Atari 2600 in 1983. Several test materials were created, but nothing was ever shipped out.
However, in 2001, the operator of the AtariAge website was gifted a prototype of the game by a former Parker Brothers employee, and that only slightly incomplete version is now available to play online for anyone excited by the prospect of "more than 2000 exciting screens."
6 The Lord Of The Rings For The Sega Genesis
Another Lord of the Rings video game that got canceled with scarcely anyone knowing about it was one intended to be released on the Sega Genesis. Ray Tobey, an early video game designer, spilled the beans as to the unreleased project on his blog, sharing concept art and test animations.
5 The Lord Of The Rings: The White Council
The Lord of the Rings: The White Council was a role-playing game originally intended to be released by EA in 2007. Some stellar concept art was created, but, ultimately, the game was delayed indefinitely in favor of other projects. EA would go on to release a different LOTR game, Lord of the Rings: Conquest, in 2009.
4 Gene Deitch's The Hobbit
In 1961, William L. Snyder, an animation director known for his Academy-Award-winning short film Munro, contacted Tolkien to get the rights to adapt The Hobbit as an animated film. Unfortunately, production took far too long, and, in order to retain the rights to the novel and sell them back to Tolkien at a higher price, Snyder was forced to cancel the original feature-length film and instead release an eleven-minute animated short, technically more of slideshow, hastily directed by illustrator Gene Deitch.
The final product was screened to an audience in 1967, even if that "audience" was just random people pulled off the street and given the admission fee in exchange for giving a signed statement saying they had seen an animated film based on The Hobbit.
3 John Boorman's Arthurian Adaptation
While attached to a two-picture-deal at United Artists, John Boorman, a director now-known for classic films like Zardoz and Deliverance, wrote a 178-page screenplay for a Lord of the Rings film and pitched it to Tolkien personally.
The bizarre final product included Gandalf ritualistically beating Gimli to get him to remember to password to Moria, Frodo seducing Galadriel, and Aragorn and Éowyn getting married (Arwen is now a thirteen-year-old). Needless to say, it did not get made.
2 Untitled "The Hobbit" Game
Test footage from an unfinished Hobbit video game developed by Traveller's Tales, best known for their work on several Lego games, recently made the rounds on the Internet after being shared by the game studio's founder Jon Burton.
Traveler's Tales spent more than $1 million on the demo gameplay, which, despite earning the attention of Peter Jackson, was ultimately vetoed by Warner Brothers.
1 The New Shadow
After The Return of the King's massive success in 1955, Tolkien briefly took it upon himself to draft a sequel, entitled The New Shadow, which would take place more than a century after Sauron's end. Sadly, he only wrote thirteen pages before giving up on the idea.
He later told a fan that, despite it exploring concepts he was intrigued by, the novel was ultimately "not worth doing." As with many of the other canceled projects, this is one Tolkien fans can attempt to complete themselves, as the starter manuscript is included as chapter sixteen of Christopher Tolkien's The Peoples of Middle-Earth.
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