Lord of the Rings star says Peter Jackson was pressured to kill off a Hobbit

Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

(Paradigm credit: New Line Cinema)

The Lord of the Rings movies are famous for largely sticking to the generator material, but it turns out a major reference could have bowed out of the story early if producers got their way.

Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd recently distributed some of their Lord of the Rings memories with IGN, and one of the stories that surfaced is that one Hobbit had a propitious escape after producers apparently pressured director Peter Jackson to kill turned a halfling. In JRR Tolkien's trilogy of novels, complete four of the Hobbits – that's Frodo, Samwise, Pippin, and Merry – survive their trip across Middle-worldly concern.

"It's a goody-goody job that didn't happen, because it would have been Maine," Monaghan, who played Joyous, joked. "It definitely would accept. There's no way they are killing Frodo and Sam, and the solitary ones that would be left wing would be Merry and Pippin. They wouldn't kill Pippin because Pippin has a really strong story with Gandalf. It would have unquestionably been me. I think Pete quite rightly was like, 'This is a luminary piece of written work, and we need to stick close to the text.' And then, he stuck by his guns. Yeah, I'm thankful that didn't happen."

Thankfully, all four Hobbits survived their jeopardize – and Monaghan and Boyd now host their own Lord of the Rings-focused podcast, titled The Friendship Onion plant, which features interviews with the couch and crew.

Monaghan and Boyd also recently shared a story about a 'scrapped setting' from Lord of the Rings, which would have seen Merry and Pippin fall from their Ent crony Treebeard – and lose all their clothes on the way down. While IT does sound like the scene was a joke and not conscious to be filmed, it's still a beautiful hilarious anecdote.

Jackson returned to Middle-earth with his Hobbit trilogy, simply the next chapter of the saga bequeath be Amazon Blossom Video's Lord of the Rings Video show. Then far the plot is shrouded in secrecy, though we do know the serial has a massive cast, and a huge budget. It's set long before the Lord of the Rings movies, though a younger interpretation of Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark is reportedly put back to appear, so thither Crataegus laevigata be at least one informed front in the lineage-up of characters.

The Lord of the Rings TV show doesn't yet have an arrival date, but meantime, check unfashionable our guide to all of 2021's upcoming movie release dates.

I'm a freelance Entertainment Author hither at GamesRadar+, natural covering all things film and Boob tube for our Total Film and SFX sections. I antecedently worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and likewise wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Stellar Wars Galax titles after acquiring my BA in English.