The 5 Strangest J.R.R. Tolkien Films That Never Got Made — And Al Pacino, The Beatles Were Supposed To Star

Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien are happy to know that Amazon.com, Inc.'s AMZN that the new series based on “The Lord of the Rings” will have its streaming debut on Sept. 2, 2022.

However, Middle Earth movie history is littered with multiple attempts to adapt the Tolkien trilogy to the screen. These failed efforts involved some of the biggest talents in the entertainment industry, as well as some creative artists with a decidedly sketchy pedigree.

For your consideration, here are five of the most intriguing “Lord of the Rings” adaptations that never advanced into production.

1. Bilbo Baggins Meets Mickey Mouse? Tolkien’s fiction haunted Walt Disney Co DIS ever since the publication of “The Hobbit” in 1937. The production team on Disney’s masterwork “Fantasia” toyed with merging elements of “The Hobbit” into selections from Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, but it was rejected as not fitting into the personality of the film.

Walt Disney himself proposed a “The Lord of the Rings” animated feature, and the idea was later raised after Disney’s death, but the studio was unable to telescope Tolkien’s grand vision into a standalone feature film.

2. The Hobbled Hobbit: If Disney represented the apex of animation, the team of William L. Snyder and Gene Deitch represented the other end of the spectrum, most infamously in a series weird and creepy Tom and Jerry cartoons and cheapjack Popeye shorts from the early 1960s.

Snyder acquired the rights to “The Hobbit” from Tolkien and directed Deitch to begin work on an animated feature film based on the property. But Snyder could not secure a distributor for the project and funds quickly dried up.

In order for Snyder to maintain the rights to the property, Deitch created a 12-minute short consisting of still drawings and a narration, which had a single non-theatrical screening in New York City.

Instead of "The Hobbit," Snyder and Deitch created the feature film "Alice of Wonderland in Paris," which some film writers consider to be among the worst animated features of all time.

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3. No Strings Attached: Puppetry was very popular on British television screens during the 1960s, most notably with Harry Corbett’s lovable glove puppet Sooty and the extravagant science-fiction adventure “Thunderbirds.”

ITV, Britain’s first commercial television network, approached Tolkien in the mid-1960s with the idea of adapting “The Lord of the Rings” with an all-puppet cast. Whether the puppets would be Sooty-style hand puppets or the elaborate marionettes used in “Thunderbirds” is not certain, but Tolkien reportedly responded to the proposal with ill-humor.

4. Magical Mystery Hobbits? United Artists acquired the rights to “The Lord of the Rings” in 1967 and decided to go the live-action route with some rather unlikely casting: The Beatles would be cast as the hobbits.

Remarkably, the Beatles were open to the idea and even joked among themselves regarding who would play which role. But the project stalled when several high-profile directors — including Stanley Kubrick, David Lean and Michelangelo Antonioni — turned down inquiries to helm the film. The Beatles would employ a low comedy riff on Tolkienesque situations as zany wizards in their 1967 television film “Magical Mystery Tour.”

Ironically, Al Brodax, who produced the Beatles’ 1968 animated feature “Yellow Submarine,” raised the prospect of an animated version of “The Lord of the Rings” in 1956, but lacked the funds to pursue the endeavor.

5. The Frodo-Fredo Connection By 1969, British director John Boorman had amassed an eclectic output including the off-beat musical “Catch Us If You Can” starring the Dave Clark Five, the gritty crime thriller “Point Blank” starring Lee Marvin and the World War II psychological drama “Hell in the Pacific” with Marvin and Toshiro Mifune.

Boorman was approached to helm a three-hour version of “The Lord of the Rings” that took rather funky liberties with the Tolkien text, including hobbits with an overactive carnal appetite, and he was eager to recruit a hot young Broadway actor named Al Pacino to make his film debut as Frodo.

Boorman’s project went nowhere as projected costs became too high for cost-conscious studios to burden. The filmmaker even approached Disney, which politely declined.

Boorman eventually jettisoned Middle Earth in favor of a world that was more bizarre than anything Tolkien could imagine: the harrowing backwoods of Appalachia in the 1972 “Deliverance.”

Photo: Would-be Hobbits Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney as low-comedy wizards in "Magical Mystery Tour." Photo courtesy Apple Films.