STANLEY KUBRICK, THE BEATLES AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS
It’s now been an incredible 15 years to the day that Stanley Kubrick went up to the great editing suite in the sky. He is regarded as one of the best directors of all time, with some incredible work under his belt. There are some stone wall classics in his arsenal, including the likes of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, he missed out on the opportunity to direct one film to rule them all.
Before 2001 became a success, Kubrick had directed the equally celebrated Dr Strangelove with Peter Sellars. It’s a well known fact that The Beatles, and John Lennon in particular, were big fans of Sellars. They obviously saw Dr. Strangelove and fell head over heels for it’s anarchic humour.
At the time, Lord of The Rings was doing the rounds amongst rock’s establishment. Many a hippie was in love with Tolkein’s book of fantasy, including the likes of Led Zeppelin. It seems John Lennon also had a penchant for Hobbits and Orcs because he approached Kubrick to direct a film adaptation of Lord of The Rings featuring the fab four.
Apparently Lennon’s plan was for himself to play Gollum, Paul to play Frodo, Ringo as Sam and George Harrison as Gandalf! Weird right? Unfortunately for The Beatles, and perhaps luckily for everyone else, Tolkein, instead of saying “yeah, yeah, yeah” said “no, no, no” and the idea was scrapped.
Here are some pretty funny and awesome movies posters made up by some talented artists…
Dean Reeves
Mike Groves
Shane Parker
Here was what I (Nuwan Sen) posted as a comment on Tom Ford’s blog :-
Yes, I first heard about The Beatles wanting to do a version of the Lord of the Rings around the time LOTR was being made (thus just around the beginning of this century).
A pity it was scrapped, for I would have actually liked to see a 60′s version with The Beatles.
Kubrick might have made a more surreal fantasy tale, without modern technology, sans CGI.
Nice tribute here to one of my favourite directors ever.
A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey are two of favourite movies ever.
No Nonsense with Nuwan Sen 
I can see why Tolkien nixed the idea – The Beatles movies were not serious, to say the least. And Tolkien was serious. Very.
But a Kubrick/Beatles version of Lord of the Rings would indeed have made for interesting viewing.
Exactly my point. I would have love to see this project see the light of day. A pity really.
A fun post! The posters are awesome.
Thanks! Although the credit should actually go to Thomas Ford.
This is the first time I posted/re-blogged a post written by someone else.