8 Movie Villains Created Out Of Spite

You wouldn't expect an orc from Lord Of The Rings to have any sort of ties with our own world, but one particular beast featured in Peter Jackson's original trilogy has a very real, very bizarre origin, linked to a disgraced movie industry veteran.

While appearing on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, Frodo himself, Elijah Wood, explained that the design of this orc - widely assumed to be Gothmog, the brutal orc leader who is first introduced in Return Of The King - was based on Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood producer who was sentenced to 23 years in prison following the exposure of disgusting, predatory sexual behaviour.

Here's what Wood had to say:

“One of the orc masks - and I remember this vividly - was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of f**k you. I think that is OK to talk about now. The guy is f**king incarcerated. f**k him.”

Before Jackson's trilogy was produced over at New Line Cinema, Weinstein's company Miramax came close to sealing the deal. However, when Weinstein made some strict demands - including giving Jackson just a single movie to adapt the books, and then capping the budget at $75 million - a frustrated Jackson leaked the script, which caught the attention of New Line's founder, Bob Shaye.

And this is clearly why someone on the production team (maybe even Jackson himself) decided to immortalise Weinstein as an ugly beast of an orc. But perhaps the sweetest revenge was that the trilogy won a boatload of Oscars, and grossed billions worldwide.

Misjudged that one, didn't ya Harv?