The first in the trilogy of deals was the trickiest. The production had to be extracted from Miramax and then employed by New Line, who first needed to instigate a process of vetting Jackson’s filmmaking outpost. Thankfully, the vibrant and intelligent Carla Fry, head of physical production at New Line, arrived to tour the facilities, get a sense of his capability and to come up with a credible budget.
Ordesky’s double-edged reward for bringing Jackson and his ambition through the door was for Shaye to position him as executive producer on the project. After all he knew the book and the director. ‘Bob and Michael both believed in the pride of authorship, that if you were an advocate of something then you’d work harder and smarter for it because you were invested in it. So I was surprised and pleased when Bob said, ‘Listen, you’re going to work on this. You’re the Tolkien fanatic, you’re the Peter Jackson advocate, you can be there to steer us through this process.’
What Ordesky didn’t yet know was how often he would play messenger, mediator and meddler between an irresistible force and an immovable object. He would have to play Gríma Wormtongue one day, Gandalf the Grey the next.
As sums were done and fine print parsed, Jackson and both divisions of Weta were plunged back into a familiar period of uncertainty. The cheques from Miramax had ceased, and New Line had yet to conclude a deal. Knowing it could easily fall apart again — you could smother LA County with the paperwork from collapsed movie deals — Miramax had their own team of bean counters in Wellington totting up everything from artwork to Orc prosthetics, which they considered bought and paid for — something Jackson disputed.
Taylor is haunted to this day by the memory of Miramax suits, scurrying around like Goblins, discussing how to best package up their assets to be shipped back to America. If a miniature didn’t fit the shipping crate — as was the case with Helm’s Deep — they concluded it should be chain-sawed up into portions that would fit. ‘I felt sick,’ he admits.
Lee had surreptitiously been taking photographs of all his pictures in case they disappeared.
By contrast, Fry — who passed away from cancer in April 2002 having only seen a completed Fellowship of the Ring — like Marty Katz, became a great advocate of the films. ‘Carla was a real unsung hero of the whole process,’ says Ordesky. Jackson had been pushing for $180 million to make two films, and Fry would stand up for the fact that three films could be made for $207 million.
It was a bold assertion. There were still so many uncertainties. No studio had ever made three films simultaneously. There was no precedent to fall back on, no one to ask how it could be done. As Ordesky explains, a number of what they call ‘critical assumptions’ went out the window. ‘Assumptions about transportation, about lodging, about all kinds of things involved in making films, because no one had ever shot anything on that scale in New Zealand.’
There had to be a hybridization of the Hollywood way with New Zealand culture. None of this was necessarily cynically driven, they were intent on enabling Jackson to make the films, and it was at this time the very capable Barrie Osborne was hired as producer.
Jackson had been keen for Katz to stay on. They had been in the trenches together and Jackson had come to depend on the wisdom beneath the Hollywood tan. More importantly, Katz had shown his ‘loyalty’ to the production. But he had family commitments. What would amount to five years away in New Zealand was too big an ask. So he never did get to roast his chocolate-coloured Porsche around the leafy avenues of Miramar.
Roughly four weeks after their first meeting with Shaye, $12 million was wired through to Miramax and The Lord of the Rings was officially the property of New Line Cinema.
In the interim, a deal was swiftly reached with Zaentz. This was now a simpler process both because it retained much the same legal framework as had been agreed with Miramax and the fact Shaye and Zaentz, in another impossible stroke of fortune, were old friends.
Zaentz later mentioned that Miramax had been facing a large payment to renew their option on the book, which was undoubtedly another motivating factor in Harvey’s willingness to cut a quick deal. The vocal impresario, who came to know Jackson and Walsh at various press events following the films’ release, would maintain that it was only because of ‘their intelligence and enthusiasm’ he ever parted with the rights. His view (in hindsight) on the Miramax situation was ardently pro-Jackson. The thought of a single film of the book was ‘absurdity’. When Shaye called him with the proposal of New Line replacing Miramax on the project, Zaentz had one stipulation: ‘Only with Peter Jackson.’
Ironically, New Line still had to close a deal with the director who had been desperately knocking on their door, which also meant closing a deal with Jackson’s fleet of production subsidiaries: Wingnut Films, Stone Street Studios, Weta Workshop, Weta Digital and his post-production facilities. Positive, businesslike relations tensed when New Line cottoned on to the fact they had been the only players in town. Shaye felt duped, and the pro-forma contract shaped by Jackson’s team would be subject to some compromise. Jackson lost his pay or play deal (which had meant he would be paid even if the films weren’t greenlit). He would effectively only be compensated upfront for one and a half films with backend bonuses. He and Shaye would have to reach an agreement on final cut.
On 24 August 1998, in lieu of any official announcement, the story was leaked to the Los Angeles Times. ‘New Line Gambles on Becoming Lord of the Rings’ ran the headline. Written by film reporter and genre geek Patrick Goldstein, it is curiously off the mark: setting the budget at a conservative $130 million, and claiming that Jackson hoped to have the first film ready for Christmas 2000 (he would still be shooting!) with the next two instalments slated for summer and winter of 2001.
It is a quoted Shaye who proves the most prescient. ‘Having seen Peter’s script and demonstration reel we believe he has the ideas and the technology to make this a quantum leap over the fantasy tales of ten or fifteen years ago.’
Goldstein also noted that on the internet fans were ‘already casting Sean Connery’ as Gandalf.
Between the lines, it was clear that sceptisim still reigned in Hollywood. This was commercial suicide.
Ordesky was actually sent a copy of Final Cut, that book about the catastrophic money-pit of Heaven’s Gate. ‘It was not given in a kindly way. I thought that if anything is going to throw me off my game it is that book; but this was not Heaven’s Gate.’
And Peter Jackson wasn’t Michael Cimino. He was an ambitious and often obsessive artist, true, but he was also a very practical, diligent, open-minded New Zealander. A quality displayed not least in his burgeoning relationship with fans. Then a similar kind of devotion ran in his veins.
In an extraordinarily smart move, the kind of gesture that comes naturally to Jackson, on 26 August 1998 (two days after the Los Angeles Times story) he agreed to take part in an online interview with the website Ain’t It Cool News. He would answer the twenty most pressing readers’ questions, addressing any concerns.
Says Kamins, Jackson wanted to communicate as early as possible that he was up to the task. ‘Ain’t It Cool News was a very vogue site at the time, and Peter’s hope was that he would show people that he understood the world and if people disagreed with decisions he was making at least they would disagree thinking, “Okay, this guy understands the universe”.’
The site’s mailbox was besieged with over 14,000 questions, not just from fanboys but fantasy authors and literature professors. Jackson ended up responding to forty questions covering the budget, special effects, how to create hobbits and mount battles, and how with the help of New Zealand’s glorious landscapes he was going take moviegoers into Middle-earth.
‘I do not intend to make a fantasy film or a fairy tale,’ he declared. ‘I will be telling a true story.’