Gandalf could have made Connery a fortune

Gandalf could have made Connery a fortune November 26, 2006

No matter how many times I hear it, I still can’t get used to the idea that Sean Connery was approached to play Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003). I remember hearing this rumour back when Connery was promoting Entrapment (1999), and hoping to dear heaven that nothing would come of it; imagine my relief when I heard that Ian McKellen had the role.

Anyway, The Scotsman is reporting that Connery could have made hundreds of millions of pounds — or dollars, come to that — if he had taken the role. This assumes, of course, that the films would have been just as successful with Connery as they were with McKellen, but I’m not so sure that they would have been.


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