If you've ever watched the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and wondered whether there wasn't some way it could have been soundtracked by tastefully curated 70s funk and soul deep cuts, wonder no more – Quentin Tarantino was very nearly parachuted in to direct it by Harvey Weinstein.

According to film writer Ian Nathan's new book, 'Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle Earth', Weinstein was so tired of Peter Jackson's insistence on his own ideas that he threatened to kick Jackson out and use Tarantino or Shakespeare in Love director John Madden.

“Harvey was like, ‘You’re either doing this or you’re not. You’re out. And I got Quentin ready to direct it’,” says Ken Kamins, who worked on the project as one of Weinstein's producers.

While the prospect of Samuel L Jackson taking up Gandalf's staff to thwart Saruman, as played by Harvey Keitel, is extremely alluring, Weinstein's 'helpful suggestions' to give the film a bit more jazz essentially gutted it like an uruk-hai hewn by Gimli's axe.

The Weinstein Company wanted the two films Jackson envisaged making at that point to be boiled down to one: a memo to Jackson from June 1998 pitches "a more radical, streamlined approach" with a few simple tweaks to make that happen.

To cram the three books into about two hours, it was suggested that Jackson bin the battle at Helm's Deep and Faramir altogether, then turn Eowyn into Boromir's sister so she could do all the stuff Faramir would have done if he hadn't been binned.

The Balrog was also slated to be cut (so quite where Gandalf 1.0 was meant to meet his end is anyone's guess), and even Saruman was under threat.

As Jackson puts it to Nathan in the book, "It was literally guaranteed to disappoint every single person that has read that book."

Fortunately Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh fronted up to Weinstein, bade him good luck with his ideas and took theirs to New Line instead.