Thanks Elijah Wood, I’m never going to able to look at orcs the same way ever again when I watch The Lord of the Rings.
Frodo somehow made orcs even uglier when he revealed that one of the orcs was modelled after the odious producer Harvey Weinstein.
He revealed this during an interview with fellow actor Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast. “One of the orc masks – and I remember this vividly – was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a f*** you,” Wood told him. “I think that is OK to talk about now, the guy is f***ing incarcerated,” he added. “F*** him.”
While Weinstein had enemies throughout Hollywood, there’s an added reason the LotR crew disliked him.
Weinstein’s company, Miramax, actually initially held the film rights to JRR Tolkien’s book series but director Peter Jackson couldn’t settle on budgets and how many films would be in the series.
Miramax allowed Jackson to take the series to any other studios if he could make it happen over one weekend and if the other studio agreed to make all three films at once, conditions Weinstein fully expected to be unfulfilled.
New Line Cinema ultimately stepped in to make the trilogy which went on to make quite a lot of money at the box office. Weinstein still did well from the series, earning millions due to its success, but his initial meddling obviously didn’t sit well with Jackson and his crew.
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Away from inspiring an orc in LotR, Weinstein saw his film empire crumble after he was found guilty of numerous charges of sexual assault. He was then sentenced to 23 years in prison and currently awaits further charges although he is appealing his sentence.
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Check out the orc inspection scene from The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King:
