SALT LAKE CITY — Last month, the Tolkien estate stated that J.R.R. Tolkien’s family does not endorse the upcoming Tolkien biopic or its contents “in any way.”
Now the director of the film is speaking up about why they chose not to work with the Tolkien family for the film.
At a post-screening event with IndieWire, director Dome Karukoski said that working with the Tolkien estate on the film would have stunted the writers’ creativity and the film’s message.
“Honestly, you try not to work with the estate for reasons obvious,” Karukoski said. “Even if it would be out of kindness to ask the estate, you start servicing them, they become your friends. You shouldn’t mess with the estate, so the film can exist purely for your own reasons and your own feelings about the characters.”
Though the Tolkien estate asserted that they did not “approve of, authorize, or participate in the making of the film,” Karukoski said the “Tolkien” creative team has been true to the individuals portrayed in the film.
“We did very, very thorough research, we understand these characters, and the emotional truth of them is very true,” Karukoski said.
He added that working with the estate on the film would have “suffocated” it.
“You’re not allowed to do certain things so that the audience can feel an emotion from it,” Karukoski said.
Karukoski told IndieWire that he had offered the Tolkien estate the opportunity to see the film before its premiere, but Tolkien estate representatives refused.
It isn’t the first time Tolkien’s estate has made efforts to protect the author’s legacy and image.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien, 94, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the “Lord of the Rings” films in the past.
“Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien reportedly told French newspaper Le Monde in 2012.
According to IndieWire, J.R.R. Tolkien himself adamantly refused Disney’s attempts to purchase screen rights to “The Lord of the Rings” in the 1960s.
At least one Tolkien seems to approve of the film, however.
Lily Collins, who plays J.R.R.’s wife Edith, told IndieWire, “Callum Tolkien, his great-grandson, plays a soldier in the trenches with Nick [Hoult], and he came to the premiere the other night. So there was a Tolkien present!”
The film will be in theaters everywhere Friday.