According to
The Scotsmen,
Sean Connery lost out on $225million by turning down the role of Gandalf in the
Lord of the Rings trilogy. The news comes from
Peter Jackson's new biography where he claims Connery was offered somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent of the final box office takings (trilogy earned a combined total of $1.5 billion) as New Line were desperate to cast a worldwide star in their movie which contained mostly unfamilar faces (
Orlando Bloom,
Elijah Wood and
Viggo Mortensen weren't so well known at time of casting). The deal would have eclipsed the current biggest sum a star has ever recieved, that of
Jack Nicholson who recieved $23 million under a similar deal for
Tim Burton'sBatman in 1989. Why did Connery turn down the role? Well last year he told the press....
"Yeah, well, I never understood it. I read the book, I read the script, I saw the movie. I still don't understand it. I would be interested in doing something that I don't fully understand, but not for eighteen months." Let's just be thankful he didn't take the role as
Ian McKellan gave us a performance of a lifetime as Gandalf. Connery's prescence would have been too much in my opinion, it's difficult in the last twenty years to watch a movie that he has appeared in and see the character he is portraying rather than seeing just Sean Connery. What do you think guys, would Connery have made a good Gandalf? source -
the scotsmen,
filmstalker