Connery Lost Hundreds of Millions Turning Down Gandalf
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Casting, Deals, New Line, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Peter Jackson, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Had Sean Connery taken the lucrative deal that was presented to him in 1999 by New Line Cinema to play Gandalf the Grey in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, he could have cleared up to as much as $434 million. Connery's squandered opportunity is the subject of a story in today's edition of The Scotsman, which gleaned the information from a passage in Brian Sibley's recent biography of Jackson. According to the piece, New Line was so worried about staking the Rings threesome without a single major, international star attached that they crafted for Connery a lavish backend deal similar to the one that lured Nicholson to play The Joker in 1989's Batman. Peter Jackson is quoted as saying that Rings executive producer Mark Ordesky told him "New Line was prepared to give him [Connery] between 10 percent and 15 percent of the films' income." Had that happened, Connery would have cashed more scratch for a single project than any actor in history.
The famously prickly Connery has gone on record saying that he wouldn't have taken the role of the big-hatted wizard because "I never understood it. I read the book, I read the script, I saw the movie, and I still don't understand it." The book also implies that Jackson wasn't keen on casting Connery, either. "I couldn't imagine him wanting to spend eighteen months in New Zealand," Jackson says, which sounds like polite movie-talk for "Please don't come and spend eighteen months in New Zealand." I personally could see Connery as a quiet, reflective Obi-Wan type, but anyone who remembers The Rock knows how silly he looks with long hair, so his interpretation of Gandalf might not have gone over well.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-25-2006 @ 5:45PM
Scott Weinberg said...
Yet another reason why producers should choose the best actor for the role, not the biggest international movie star.
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11-26-2006 @ 12:56AM
muckster said...
That's hypothetical math, and it would only work out presuming that Fellowship (in which Gandalf plays an especially important role) had made the same amount of money with Connery as it did with McKellan. Somehow I doubt that.
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11-26-2006 @ 12:58AM
Beeslo said...
I remember hearing about this long ago. Funny enough, he was actually offered another lucrative role for a pretty popular movie a couple of years before LOTR was cast. He was one of the first approached for the role of Morphius in the Matrix. For the same reasons stated above, Connery didn't understand any of it and turned the movie flat down.
The true comedic gem of this, is that after turning down such blockbuster hits like the Matrix and LOTR, Connery decided that no matter how utterly weird and confusing the next script offered to him was, he would take it. What was that weird and confusing movie? Yes, ladies and gentlemen...The League of Extradonairy Gentlemen. And the rest is history...
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11-26-2006 @ 1:37AM
Gary Bourgeault (bizofshowbiz.com) said...
It just confirms that quality movies have nothing to do with who's starring in them. Time and again it has been shown that the quality of the story, writing and the director is what makes a movie go.
There have been too many successful movies without star in them to justify thinking in terms of star power anymore. I guess it's the agents that like to keep that fantasy alive in our minds.
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11-26-2006 @ 5:25AM
Brian Sibley said...
THE SCOTSMAN is inaccurate in suggesting that Peter Jackson did not want to have Connery in the role of Gandalf.
As my biography makes very clear, Jackson was - and still is - a huge fan of Connery's work and the early James Bond films were among his key influences as a young man - indeed, he began making an amateur Bond-style movie wearing a tux with a killer bow-tie!
There's no question that if Connery had taken the part, Jackson would have been thrilled to have got a chance to direct one of his cinema heroes - especially if he had been rematched against Christopher Lee (Bond's nemesis in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN); but it is equally true that Jackson is now obviously aware that he found what turned out to be the perfect Gandalf in Ian McKellen...
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11-26-2006 @ 5:14PM
Donal said...
roger moore was bond in the man with the golden gun-so no rematch there!
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11-26-2006 @ 9:36AM
Brian Sibley said...
Correct... I was stupidly muddling my Bonds in thinking of how Jackson would have relished being able to direct a Bond and a Bond villain...
Living in NZ, Jackson saw the Bond films partly on release and partly on re-release: his first viewing was of Moore's debut film, LIVE AND LET DIE, followed by a re-issue (on a double-bill with THE DAM BUSTERS) of Connery in DR NO. The following year, '74, he saw THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.
In the biography, I quote Jackson as saying: "As a Bond fan, working with Connery was somnething I would have loved to do - and would still love to do - and because he has an international stardom and a huge following it was, from a marketing point of view, an attractive idea. But it wasn't one that really fitted with our mantra of keeping the films as believable as possible, because I felt that Gandalf would take on a Sean Connery persona, with a long beard and a robe..."
Had Connery accepted, I don't doubt that Jackson would have worked well with him and it is always a pointless excercise to second-guess how a role MIGHT have been played by a different actor...
Come to that, the story is that Ian Fleming always thought of Cary Grant as his ideal actor for James Bond...
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11-26-2006 @ 10:11AM
Donna A. said...
The main thing is all the right people came together and made a beautifully done movie.
Donna A.
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11-26-2006 @ 1:11PM
Beeslo said...
Cary Grant as Bond...now thats interesting. At least he wouldn't have to speak in that ridiculous "American" accent and could actually have spoken regularly for a change. He was british for all that didn't know.
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11-26-2006 @ 10:07PM
kaitlin hess said...
THANK GOD Sean COnnery wasn't Gandalf! Ian McKellan MADE Gandalf....well....GANDALF! NO ONE ELSE!
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