There’s so much love for Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings trilogy that the extended versions of the already lengthy original films, containing over two additional hours of sweeping Middle-earth drama, are now accepted as the preferred way to watch. But for some fans, even that’s not enough, and the hunger for more has fueled hopes that an “extended extended edition” could one day see the light of day. Unfortunately, the so-called “Mithril Cut” is as fantastical as J.R.R. Tolkien’s original stories, according to Jackson himself.
Speaking to Empire, Jackson crushed dreams that there might be incredible, unused footage floating around in the cinematic ether.
“Are there great scenes that we never used? The answer is no,” he said. “There are bits and pieces, I guess. But if you did an extended-extended cut, or whatever it will get called, it would be disappointing. It would be the extended cut with a few extra seconds of something here and there; it wouldn’t be worthwhile doing.”
Co-writer Philippa Boyens backed him up: “There’s not a lot. There really isn’t.”
However, there may be some hope yet for completists dying to behold even those “bits and pieces.” Jackson isn’t ruling out creating a Lord of the Rings making-of film someday. “The footage contains alternative takes, it contains bloopers, it contains a bit more of a sense of the mechanics of making the films,” he told Empire. “But to this day, I haven’t persuaded [the studio], because obviously it’s a big undertaking.”
Coming from the guy who released a nearly eight-hour Beatles miniseries a few years back—we know he’s up for a documentary challenge.
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