Peter Jackson considered hypnosis to forget all of his films

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films combined might hold the highest number of Oscar wins and nominations in the history of any film series, but that didn’t stop the director wanting to wipe the movies’ existence from his memory. 

Speaking ahead of the release of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power next month, Jackson revealed he once considered undergoing hypnosis in a bid to forget he’d helmed the blockbuster trilogy, and even asked Derren Brown for help.

Jackson explained that he'd considered hypnotherapy so that he could view the films like a fan for the first time, saying: “It was such a loss for me not to be able to see them like everyone else.”

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He told The Hollywood Reporter: “When we did The Lord of the Rings movies, I always felt I was the unlucky person who never got to see [them] as a coming-out-of-the-blue film. 

“By the time they were screening, I was immersed in it for five or six years.”

He added: “I actually did seriously consider going to some hypnotherapy guy to hypnotise 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. 

“I didn’t follow through with it, but I did talk to Derren Brown about that and he thought he could do it.”

Luckily for Jackson, he’ll be able to sit back and get stuck into The Rings of Power just like the rest of us, as the director wasn’t involved in the making of the upcoming series. 

The Kiwi explained that although he’d been approached by Amazon initially about the show, with the studio promising to send him scripts, the offer was never followed up on.

The Rings of Power will be available to stream from 2 September and takes place thousands of years before the events of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the second age of Middle Earth. 

Rings of Power will tell the story of a young Sauron’s rise to power and also show the forging of the rings given to the elves, men and dwarves, not to mention the master ring which has the power to dominate all of Middle Earth.