Hobbit actor says Warner Bros. “got in the way” of Peter Jackson’s vision

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — (Image credit: IMDb)

Jed Brophy, who played Nori the dwarf in The Hobbit trilogy, has spoken out against the Middle Earth-set movies, saying that director Peter Jackson was hindered by the studio while making The Lord of the Rings prequels.

After bringing J.R.R. Tolkein’s LOTR trilogy to the big screen in the early 2000s, Jackson later adapted Tolkien's novel The Hobbit. The book was turned into a series of three films following Bilbo Baggins (played by Martin Freeman), a hobbit who’s reluctantly roped into a quest by wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and a team of dwarves who are on a mission to reclaim their home.

However, the latter trilogy was not as widely praised as Jackson’s earlier Tolkein adaptations – and Brophy blames the lack of freedom that comes with working with a major studio like Warner Bros. "I may be speaking out of turn here, and probably if those people ever find me I'll get slammed, but I think that Warner Brothers kind of got in the way of Peter and The Hobbit,” he said on New Zealand podcast Kiwi Talkz.

“None of them are people that can actually look at a script and in their head imagine how you can actually get the best drama out of that,” Brophy added. “And if you get in the way of that process you're actually stopping someone from actually getting a flow on, and that's what I think happened, that's what I could see happening is that there was not that same flow.”

We can next see Middle Earth on our screens in the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show on Amazon Prime – although we don’t know when that will be as the series doesn’t have an official release date yet. In the meantime, check out our list of the best shows on Amazon Prime that you can stream right now.

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related. I help bring you all the latest news, features, and reviews, as well as helming our Big Screen Spotlight column. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.