Elijah Wood: LOTR Orc Was Modeled on Harvey Weinstein

If you thought one of the orcs in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings looked familiar, you were probably right: Elijah Wood revealed this week that one of them was modeled after Harvey Weinstein. "I think that is OK to talk about now," since Weinstein is in jail, said Wood, who played Frodo in the film trilogy, on the episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast that aired Monday. Wood explained that director Peter Jackson first started developing the films at Miramax, Weinstein's production company, but that Weinstein wanted all three of JRR Tolkien's books condensed into one movie, the Guardian reports.

According to Wood, Weinstein also threatened to replace Jackson with various other directors, allowed him to switch producers but only under strict stipulations and within an "insane" window of time, and capped the project's budget without telling Jackson. Ultimately, Jackson shopped the project around and got a commitment from New Line Cinema to make all three movies, as Jackson wanted. The orc mask was then designed to resemble Weinstein as a little message to the producer, Wood said. No word on which specific orc it is, but Entertainment Weekly has a side-by-side of the now-disgraced producer and an orc that could fit the bill. (More Harvey Weinstein stories.)