In the current climate it’s easy to mock disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein but some were ahead of the game. Not all film fans may know that the history of getting The Lord of the Rings franchise to the big screen from Peter Jackson began with Harvey and his brother Bob, but there were one of the driving forces for it back in the 1990s. Ever the roadblock in actually getting something made, Jackson’s work with the pair ultimately ended after the project was able to get set up at New Line Cinema, but the Oscar winning filmmaker wouldn’t let his feelings on the two producers end there.
Speaking on Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard recently (H/T The Hollywood Reporter), franchise star Elijah Wood was recapping the road from development to shooting on the trilogy with Shepard, who admitted he loved that saga as much as the movies themselves. While making note of the specific and near-unachievable hurdles that Weinstein put in front of Jackson in order for the movies to get made, Wood revealed that Jackson made sure to pay special tribute to Weinstein in the form of one of the film’s on-screen monsters..
“It’s funny, this was recently spoken about because Dom (Monaghan) and Bill (Boyd) have a podcast, The Friendship Onion,” Wood revealed. “They were talking to Sean Astin about his first memory of getting to New Zealand. He had seen these orc masks. And one of the orc masks – and I remember this vividly – was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a f-ck you.” He added, while laughing, “I think that is OK to talk about now, the guy is f-cking incarcerated. Fuck him.”
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