I read this snippet of a report on the talk Peter Jackson gave over the weekend in Australia, about the Miramax 1-film version of LotR (the one that PJ absolutely refused to do):
it essentially had the name ‘Lord of the Rings’, and not much more than that. For example, the whole Moria sequence was gone, the idea being that they’d pick the story up on the other side and Frodo would say ‘Well, damn, weren’t those caves/orcs something. Pity about Gandalf.’ Applying the ‘Tell not Show’ principle, obviously. Gondor and Rohan were to be collapsed into one country, ruled over by a synthesis of Theoden and Denethor. The mind just boggles.
‘It can’t be done!’ PJ and Fran said, ‘You will alienate everyone who has ever read the book!’, they said. ‘Oh yes it can’, he said. Weinstein had already lined up a scriptwriter, and a director to take over the project if PJ decided to bail. PJ and Fran said they had to think about it, and flew back to NZ. They went away for the weekend (it was Fran’s birthday) and discussed it as they were walking along the beach, and decided to opt out of the likely ‘debacle’. So they rang their agent and told him to contact Miramax, and call it off. However, their agent pointed out to Miramax that this was a project that PJ had brought to them, not vice versa, and that PJ should have the opportunity to pitch the project elsewhere before Miramax took over. They agreed, PJ’s agent contacted him to say they had 4 weeks starting that second, so that was the end of the weekend.