Peter Jackson Says He Almost Got Hypnosis to Forget Making 'Lord of the Rings' to Watch as a Fan

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The Lord of the Rings' epic tales of adventure were so extraordinary that even director Peter Jackson wanted to get the full experience like the viewers.

"When we did The Lord of the Rings movies I always felt I was the unlucky person who never got to see as a coming-out-of-the-blue film," Jackson, 60, recently told The Hollywood Reporter.

"By the time there were screenings, I was immersed in it for five or six years. It was such a loss for me not to be able to see them like everyone else," he continued, before adding that he considered a pretty extreme measure.

"I actually did seriously consider going to some hypnotherapy guy to hypnotize me to make me forget about the films and the work I had done over the last six or seven years so I could sit and enjoy them," Jackson continued.

Jackson did not pursue hypnosis, but he may be able to enjoy The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which premieres globally this September on Prime Video, as he has no affiliation with the upcoming fantasy series.

But that wasn't of his choosing, he stated in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast last Thursday.

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The Academy Award-winning director said that Amazon left him hanging after holding initial conversations tied to him getting onboard with the upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel series.

"They asked me if I wanted to be involved — [writer-producer Fran Walsh] and I — and I said, 'That's an impossible question to answer without seeing a script,'" Jackson said in the interview.

And though he detailed that Amazon then promised to send the scripts to Jackson and Walsh as soon as they were done, the filmmaker explained, "The scripts never showed up. That's the last thing I heard."

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Jackson, who topped the Forbes' Highest-Paid Entertainer List of 2022, said he holds no ill will towards Amazon, however — "No complaints at all," he said — and he even noted that he's looking forward to watching the upcoming series.

"I'll be watching it," he said. "I'm not the sort of guy who wishes ill will. Filmmaking is hard enough."

The series is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, movies — before those storied rings were even forged. It's based on a lesser-known part of author J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle-earth lore: the Second Age.

Among the characters waging the epic war of good and evil are Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker); Harfoots Marigold Brandyfoot (Sara Zwangobani), Elanor 'Nori' Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) and Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry); the Dwarves King Durin III (Peter Mullan) and Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), as well as The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova).

The Rings of Power has a price tag estimated at $450 million, according to AOL, making it Amazon's most expensive project ever.