Sean Connery Could Have Been Gandolf…And Made $450 Million For It In The Process
File this under “What could have been…”
While Ian McKellen is probably the best Gandolf LORD OF THE RINGS fans could have asked for, Worst Previews is reporting that Warner Bros initially had the one and only Sean Connery in mind for the part!
The site says that with making all three films at once and hiring the lesser known Peter Jackson as director, the WB wanted one piece of protection with a well-known actor.
Figuring Connery would be a perfect choice, executives sent him the scripts and offered him $10 million upfront, as well at 15% of the box office results.
In the end, Connery obviously said no (his reasoning was that he never understood anything he read…), but if the deal did go down, with the overall gross of $2.9 Billion worldwide, Connery could have pulled in a massive $450 Million!
But it’s okay though…the studio still got the much cheaper McKellen, we got one of the best trilogies in film history, and Connery avoided being confused by Hobbits for up to six films…