The Lord of the Rings (film series)

The Lord of the Rings is a film series consisting of three high fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson. They are based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are subtitled The Fellowship of the Ring 2001, The Two Towers 2002 and The Return of the King 2003. They were distributed by New Line Cinema.

Director Peter Jackson first came into contact with The Lord of the Rings when he saw Ralph Bakshis 1978 animated film The Lord of the Rings. Jackson enjoyed the film and wanted to know more. Afterwards, he read a tiein edition of the book during a twelvehour train journey from Wellington to Auckland when he was seventeen.In 1995, Jackson was finishing The Frighteners and considered The Lord of the Rings as a new project, wondering why nobody else seemed to be doing anything about it. With the new developments in computergenerated imagery following Jurassic Park, Jackson set about planning a fantasy film that would be relatively serious and feel real. By October, he and his partner Fran Walsh teamed up with Miramax Films boss Harvey Weinstein to negotiate with Saul Zaentz who had held the rights to the book since the early 1970s, pitching an adaptation of The Hobbit and two films based on The Lord of the Rings. Negotiations then stalled when Universal Studios offered Jackson a remake of King Kong. Weinstein was furious, and further problems arose when it turned out Zaentz did not have distribution rights to The Hobbit United Artists, which was in the market, did. By April 1996, the rights question was still not resolved. ........

Source: Wikipedia