Sir Peter Jackson declares John Lennon would be "obvious" pick to play Gollum. Photo / New Line Cinema
Sir Peter Jackson declares John Lennon would be "obvious" pick to play Gollum. Photo / New Line Cinema
Sir Peter Jackson would have cast John Lennon as Gollum in Lord of the Rings.
The 60-year-old filmmaker - who is at the helm of new documentary series The Beatles: Get Back - has opened up on the Fab Four's nixed plans to make a live-action musical movie based on JRR Tolkien's fantasy novels, and he's weighed on how the casting could have gone with Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison taking on the lead roles.
Appearing on The Late Show, he told host Stephen Colbert: "Obviously Paul is Frodo, isn't he? Sam is obviously Ringo. So then you've got, well, John is Gollum obviously.
Sir Peter Jackson declares John Lennon would be "obvious" pick to play Gollum. Photo / New Line Cinema
"They cast themselves, and they did it right. Gandalf is George the mystic, magician, that's perfect. I mean you'd have to age him up a bit.
"And I guess if you have Gollum, and you had the four Beatles, John Lennon is the obvious one, absolutely, slam dunk."
Sir Peter Jackson directs The Beatles: Get Back. Photo / Getty Images
In the end, the band didn't get the rights to the movie, and Jackson would later go on to direct the big-screen trilogy.
Meanwhile, the director explained it was Apple film producer Denis O'Dell who originally had the idea, but it didn't get off the ground.
He told the BBC: "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."
The Beatles: Get Back is a three-part documentary by Peter Jackson covering the making of the 1970 album Let It Be. Photo / Supplied
Jackson admitted he was in "two minds" about the quartet's version never getting made.
He explained: "Paul said, 'Well I'm glad we didn't do it, because you got to do yours and I liked your film.'
"But I said to him, 'Well, it's a shame you didn't do it, because it would have been a musical.' What would The Beatles have done with a Lord of The Rings soundtrack album?
"That would have been 14 or 15 Beatles songs that would have been pretty incredible to listen to. So I've got two minds about it.
"I would have loved to hear that album, but I'm also glad I got the chance to do the films. But those songs would have been fascinating."
