1. Miramax Wanted To Butcher The Lord Of The Rings
We should count ourselves lucky that The Lord of the Rings trilogy ended up at New Line Cinema, because if the original deal with Miramax went through, they would have been a very different beast indeed. Peter Jackson had always wanted to make a trilogy out of the three books, though conceded that a studio would be unlikely to bite, so proposed to Miramax a two-movie adaptation, but that wasn't enough of a concession for them; they wanted the story contracted down into one film, and characters such as Rohan and Gondor combined into one. With Jackson's bulls*** detector going off the charts, he instead convinced Miramax to allow him to take the project to New Line, while the Weinsteins remained on-board as Executive Producers, in case the films were, you know, actually any good. New Line gave Jackson essentially carte blanche to achieve his vision, and the film was of course a massive success, though this ironically led to Jackson getting too big for his breeches with The Hobbit, as Warner Bros. allowed him to distend one short book into three painfully protracted films. Which devious cases of movie subterfuge rankle you the most? Let us know in the comments below.