Peter Jackson has talked about the time a delivery driver told him The Hobbit movies were “crap”, mistakenly thinking they were directed by someone else.
The New Zealand director helmed all three of The Lord Of The Rings films, released between 2001-03, later returning to adapt The Hobbit into three movies, released between 2012-14.
While both trilogies were box office successes, The Hobbit films are considered by some to be inferior. The Rotten Tomatoes critics scores for all three Lord Of The Rings films are about 90 per cent, while the final Hobbit instalment, The Battle Of The Five Armies, scored just 59 per cent.
During an on-stage appearance at Cannes this week, the filmmaker recalled the time a delivery driver unwittingly insulted the movies in front of him. The anecdote was captured on social media, and can be viewed below.
“The FedEx delivery man pulls into the drive,” he begins. “I go to the door, and I get [the package] off him, and he just looks at me. He says, ‘Hey there, you’re that fella that made Lord Of The Rings aren’t you? Lord Of The Rings that was great man, that was a fantastic film’. I said ‘Yeah, oh thanks’, and he turns back to the van, then he stops and he says: ‘Oh they should have got you to make those Hobbit movies, because they were crap’.”
Explaining how he addressed the mistake, he concluded: “I just wait, and I just roll my eyes and say ‘Yeah, tell me about it, mate’”.
New Lord Of The Rings movies are on the horizon – a sequel co-written by Stephen Colbert, and The Hunt For Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis. Recently, Jamie Dornan was announced as the actor who will be playing Aragorn in the latter film, replacing original trilogy star Viggo Mortensen.
English (US) · 