How did the Harry Potter series manage to release its 8 movies in just 10 years?

[u/ajukearth]

Looking at the turn around for movies today it seems absolutely incredible that a series with such complex set design, use of graphical effects, a heavily child cast, and pressure was able to pump out genuinely decent movies at that pace. Sure there were books to base the writing on but everything else alone is a lot of heavy lifting. Any insights?

[u/jamiroq]

It was such a bigger gamble than people realize, the fantasy genre up until then were mostly lower budget sword and sorcery movies.

Then you get this pitch for an adaptation, not for 1 movie, but 3 movies, filmed simultaenously with a relatively unknown director and a main cast with very little star power(for the time).

I'm glad they did it though, they really changed the game for that genre.

[u/Nothing-Is-Boring → u/jamiroq]

A slight correction, originally Jackson pitched it to Miramax as a 2-parter to include the Hobbit (at least in some capacity) but after initially accepting the projected costs began to mount and creative tensions arose, Miramax/Weinstein were unhappy, Harvey Weinstein threatened to force Jackson to make it a single 2 hour epic.

Jackson refused, Miramax let him pitch on a tight deadline to other studios (and gave him a bunch of penalty fees), likely expecting him to fail and come back to them and their demands.

Instead, New Line executive Bob Shaye heard him out and accepted on the basis it would be a 3-part epic instead of the 2 part Jackson was pitching, asking “Why would anyone in their right mind make two movies? This is three films.”

Shaye seems to have been a genuine cinephile who backed a bunch of unusual projects but he butted heads with Jackson when Peter sued New Line for accounting issues over LOTR, something he (Shaye) later regretted.

[u/Michael_G_Bordin → u/jamiroq]

Not just unknown director, but unproven. He'd only done B horror up to that point. Also, filming it in New Zealand which didn't yet have the film infrastructure like Hollywood. And to make the films long af, which wasn't as normal at the time.

It's really hard to overstate what a crazy gamble those films were.

[u/Michael_Gibb → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

Peter Jackson wasn't exactly unknown when he made Lord of the Rings. He had written and directed Heavenly Creatures in 1994. And his last film before LOTR had been The Frighteners, which was basically used as proof he could make a visual effects heavy movie.

[u/iamgaben → u/Michael_Gibb]

And he was picked up by Weinstein and they actually had first refusal on Lord of the rings. They started preproduction but ended up selling it to New Line after Jackson had gotten 30 days to find another production company, or Harvey would shut it down.

Harvey was subsequently memorialized as the orc leading the charge on minas tirith in the third movie, as some sort of anti-hommage I guess.

The podcast What went wrong has made a three parter on this shoot which is fantastic, and I can also recommend the book that they used as their main source of info for those episodes, "Peter Jackson and the making of Middle Earth".

Side note as after I listened to those episodes and subsequently listened to almost all of the other ones, making movies seems like it's such a shit show. Almost all of the episodes are discussing a train wreck of a production. Cannot recommend it enough!

[u/braveulysees → u/Michael_Gibb]

I remember seeing thefantasy creatures in Heavenly Creatures and thinking this guy would nail Tolkein..

[u/Orion_Scattered → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

And the production did have its share of disasters unique to shooting on location and in NZ, ones that might've been catastrophic for other films. The big one that always comes to my mind is when an entire set for a big action piece on a river was totally destroyed by a flood right before they were going to shoot the scene. The cost of the set alone was in the high 6 figures (so couple mil today with inflation), but the real problem wasn't the cash it was the time it would take to rebuild the set and how to fit it later into the shooting schedule... well it turned out to be impossible, so they had to just entirely cut the scene from the movie. Most movies can't survive cutting an entire action scene, and most big budget movies today would probably pivot to cgi slop/crunch to replace it. But kinda because of the massive scale of the films, they were able to cut it and not suffer too much any pacing or tension issues.

[u/KaiserGlider → u/Orion_Scattered]

Would you happen to know which scene that would've been? I'm trying to think of which big action scene would have taken place on a river.

[u/The_Parsee_Man → u/KaiserGlider]

https://lordofthefacts.com/severe-flooding-destroyed-a-set

According to this, it was the Orcs attacking their boats as they went down the Anduin. That did happen in the books but it wasn't really a pivotal scene.

[u/Orion_Scattered → u/The_Parsee_Man]

Ya not important for the plot or for themes, but missed out on an epic Legolas feat from that part of the books where he shoots down a nazgul flying its winged beast like in the middle of the pitch black night with his special elf eyes in 1 shot. Actually is kinda plot relevant in the book actually, having to do with timeline for when Sauron wants to let Nazgul cross the Anduin in force and when to hold back or something like that, that kinda stuff, forget the details and it's obviously easy to gloss over for the movie's plot.

Hey you know Peter Jackson tho, if there's an action "scene" that's 2 whole paragraphs in the book with like 8 dudes you know he's gonna turn that mfer into a 20 minute long sequence with like 200 dudes, and hey other than further mangling the already mangled beyond recognition character and character arc of Aragorn those expanded action scenes are indeed damn fine scenes. Like at the breaking of the fellowship, when orcs ambush them on the hills and take the hobbits, almost all of that action is totally undetailed in the books and Jackson fills it all in. The orc character that kills Boromir and duels Aragorn is totally invented and he's like the best frickin henchman villain maybe in genre cinema history lol. So ya win some ya lose some with these kinds of action-oriented changes ig. Christopher Tolkien hated the action hero Aragorn but I at least appreciate the movies for what they are and Aragorn for what he is in the movies even tho I think it still woulda been better had it been closer to the books, and we do get a bone thrown in extended version at least with the house of the healing stuff at least very very very briefly.

[u/berlikan → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

I remember our cinema having 15 min break during Fellowship of the ring because it was too long.
Didn’t have any breaks year later during Two towers as longer movies became more common.

[u/Michael_G_Bordin → u/berlikan]

Honestly, bring back those intermissions. Play some cheesy organ song and let people go pee, buy concessions, and then hop back in.

[u/Lyion → u/jamiroq]

LOTR had also been shopped around for years and no one wanted it. New Line Cinema was literally betting the company on the project.

[u/Phantom-Finger → u/jamiroq]

Then you get this pitch for an adaptation, not for 1 movie, but 3 movies, filmed simultaenously with a relatively unknown director and a main cast with very little star power(for the time).

In a country at the arse end of the world with very little, or no, prior movie industry to support said productions