{"id":438430,"date":"2026-05-12T20:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/438430\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:00:10","slug":"peter-jackson-gets-cannes-palme-dor-from-elijah-wood-in-lotr-reunion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/438430\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Jackson Gets Cannes Palme d’Or From Elijah Wood in ‘LOTR’ Reunion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt was a \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d reunion at Cannes Film Festival<\/a> on Tuesday night as Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson<\/a> received an honorary Palme d\u2019Or from Elijah Wood<\/a>, who played Frodo Baggins in the fantasy franchise.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his speech, Wood recalled meeting Jackson for the first time at 18 after sending in an audition video. \u201cHe had seen a VHS tape I\u2019d made with friends in the woods of Griffith Park, and now they wanted to meet the young man who had sent it,\u201d Wood said. \u201cAnd when a little while later the call came that I was going to be Frodo Baggins, I sat down on the floor of my bedroom and I understood with the whole of my being my life had just been divided into before and after. And I know I\u2019m far from the only person who has had their life changed by Peter Jackson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccepting the award from Wood with a hug, Jackson commented that he\u2019s \u201cgrown a little bit of facial hair\u201d since the first time they met 27 years ago. \u201cIf someone does a remake of \u2018Gone With the Wind,\u2019 it could be your role,\u201d Jackson joked. He then delivered a heartfelt speech about how Cannes helped to save \u201cThe Lord of the Rings<\/a>\u201d franchise after a time of bad press during the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had shot \u2018Lord of the Rings\u2019 over three years, and we shot all three films at the same time,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAnd the press was sort of weird, it was a strange time because Warners was being sold \u2014 what goes around, comes around \u2014 and so all the press was sort of talking about this great folly. What happens if the first film fails? What are they going to do about films two and three because they\u2019re already made? It was a huge gamble, but all the media was talking about that the gamble was going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut New Line Cinema founder Bob Shaye had a plan. He decided to screen 20 minutes of the first film, \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring,\u201d at the 2001 festival to try and rewrite the narrative.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBob Shaye rolled the dice and so we had to quickly finish 20 minutes of the film. We brought that 20 minutes here in 2001 in May, and we did some press in that castle up on the hill and had a party there, and Bob\u2019s great gamble really changed the perception of the film,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cAnd for me obviously, it was a life-changing thing. So by the time the film came out there was an anticipation that there wouldn\u2019t have been if not for Cannes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTwenty-five years later, \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d is still going strong. Jackson executive produced the animated installment \u201cThe War of the Rohirrim\u201d in 2024, Gollum actor Andy Serkis is stepping behind the camera to direct 2027\u2019s \u201cHunt for Gollum\u201d and in March Jackson announced that Stephen Colbert and his son Peter are developing the next chapter in the franchise, titled \u201cShadows of the Past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJackson joins a prestigious list of previous Cannes honorary Palme recipients, including Agn\u00e8s Varda, Marco Bellocchio, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro and Tom Cruise.<\/p>\n

The 2026 Cannes Film Festival runs through May 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d reunion at Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night as Oscar-winning director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6403,458,78023,146,85,46,29590,58542],"class_list":["post-438430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-celebrities","tag-elijah-wood","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-peter-jackson","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}