Peter Jackson has named which scene from the acclaimed Lord of the Rings film trilogy he considers his favourite.
Jackson directed the Oscar-winning adaptations of JRR Tolkien’s hit fantasy novels, returning to adapt The Hobbit into a separate trilogy in 2012.
Speaking to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jackson was asked which scene in the original trilogy was his favourite.
Rather than select any of Lord of the Rings’s elaborate battle set-pieces, Jackson instead opted for a quiet scene near the beginning of The Two Towers, centring on the character of Gollum (Andy Serkis).
In the scene, written by Jackson’s partner Fran Walsh, Gollum debates whether he will murder Sam (Sean Astin) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) to steal back the ring.
“We were shooting Two Towers and it was introducing Gollum,” said Jackson. “A key thing with Gollum is that most people know he's Sméagol and he's Gollum, it's like a split. But we hadn't got a scene where you really got the idea of, ‘This guy is two people.’ So we knew that we needed it but we had no time to shoot it.
“So Fran wrote a scene where Sam and Frodo are asleep, so they can be just lumps in the bed, we don't even have to have Elijah and Sean. We didn't have anyone to direct it, so I said to Fran, ‘You wrote it, you should shoot it.’
"So she went in for a day and she wrote and directed a scene which has become pretty famous now.”
The Lord of the Rings is currently being adapted into a TV series for Amazon Prime Video. The series will be set in Middle-earth, but will not feature any of the events depicted in Jackson’s film trilogy.
