Disney's Bob Iger Proves Costly Ideas Can Be Cheap

When the rights to the “Lord of the Rings” movies were held by producer Saul Zaentz,  he had developed a rapport with Harvey Weinstein when the two made “The English Patient.” So Weinstein worked on Zaentz to develop the idea for two “Lord of the Rings” pictures to be directed by Peter Jackson at a cost of $180 million. Weinstein, the co-founder of the specialty film studio Miramax Films, didn’t have the money but around 1998 took the idea to his then-boss, Michael Eisner, the CEO of Walt Disney Co., which then owned Miramax. “Michael passed,” Eisner’s production chief Joe Roth told Weinstein, according to James Stewart’s book “DisneyWar.”