Peter Jackson Was Pushed Hard to Kill a Hobbit in The Lord of the Rings

Dominic Monaghan (aka the hobbit Merry Brandybuck) recently shared that after attaining the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s source materials for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson was pressured by studio executives to kill one of the hobbits in one of the films. Clearly none of the executives foresaw being scorched by flames hotter than lava from the ‘Crack of Doom’ if they killed one of ‘The Fellowship?!’ If you haven’t seen nor read the tales… SPOILER ALERT, better minds prevailed.

Monaghan’s glad, too, saying, “It’s a good job that didn’t happen, because it would have been me. It definitely would have,” Monaghan joked. “There’s no way they are killing Frodo and Sam, and the only ones that would be left would be Merry and Pippin. They wouldn’t kill Pippin because Pippin has a really strong story with Gandalf. It would have definitely been me. I think Pete quite rightly was like, ‘This is a luminary piece of written work, and we need to stick close to the text.’ So, he stuck by his guns,” Monaghan said. “Yeah, I’m thankful that didn’t happen.”

RELATED: Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV Show Will Have Nudity But No Sex Scene

We all are. Why don’t you take away second breakfast while you’re at it, execs? Monaghan along with fellow hobbit, Billy Boyd, have been making the TV couch rounds to promote their new podcast ‘The Friendship Onion.’ Of course, one of their first stops was visiting The Lord of the Rings superfan (Picture when the Beatles came to America, that kind of superfan.), Mr. Colbert on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.They shared a timely story about a nude scene they were supposed to shoot for the film. Revenge for all their on set pranks, screenwriter Philippa Boyens approached them with some changes to the script.

“She said, ‘Oh, it’s a new scene, we’re filming next week with the Ents, with Treebeard,” Boyd said. “‘So when Merry and Pippin are up Treebeard, he gets afraid and shakes his branches, which makes you guys fall.’ This has all been printed in the script. ‘It makes you guys fall and as you hit all the branches on the way down, by the time you hit the ground, you’re naked.’ And Merry turns to Pippin and says, ‘it’s cold, isn’t it?’ and Pippin says, ‘hold me, Merry.'”

While Boyd was flabbergasted, Monaghan was down, saying, “I was kind of into it, because I have a really fantastic ass, and I thought now this is the time to get it out.” Timely, as an online petition that has been signed by over 48,000 people begging Amazon Studios to keep nudity out of the upcoming The Lord of the Rings TV series has been making the rounds. Disgusted, Colbert proved there was nudity in the books by reading a passage from one of the Tom Bombadil chapters. Colbert said, “So I don’t want to hear it from any of the prudes who don’t think they shouldn’t be any nudity in The Lord of the Rings”The mind wanders… Can’t wait for the series!

Topics: Lord of the Rings

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