I don’t think it’s that big of a mystery. I’m sure it had a lot to do with him trying to turn The Hobbit into a new epic trilogy. It’s a pretty short book, it really just needed one film. Also, the first one was terrible to the point that I never bothered watching the other two, and I love LOTR
The hobbit films being a mess were entirely the fault of new line.
The preproduction of LOTR was in the range of 2 years. That’s hammering out the script, but also locations, sets, securing extras, apparently all of the horses in NZ for some of the shots but also all of the costumes and armor.
All of those preproduction things were allowed in the range of 6 weeks(as opposed to over 100) for the Hobbit, and New Line refused to budge at all.
That wasn’t really on Jackson from what I understand. He originally wasn’t even going to be directing the Hobbit films, but had to come in after the original director had other obligations and things were a mess when he got there. I believe the studio had already decided that it would be three films as well, but I could be misremembering.
He could have quit the project though.
My understanding is that he (at least partially) did it so other people wouldn’t be out of their jobs. Some of which he might already know from the LOTR trilogy.
Who knows if the project would have continued without Peter Jackson stepping in.
He could’ve quit as much as you could’ve started it.
I understand he was pressured into (or to step up in?) The Hobbit after things were already very much on the wrong track.
And he’d been brewing ideas of how to do lotr long before doing it, and never intended to do The Hobbit.
Not a fluke, just peaked very early in his international career. LOTR was only his second big budget production. Name another director who made three movies in a row that are as epic as the LOTR trilogy and made movies that are similar or higher quality afterwards. There aren’t many.
He set himself a really high bar, for sure.
I still have to chuckle when I see the updated cover for Bad Taste
Still have no idea how he managed to score that job at the time.
You missed the R rated muppet movie he did.
