Subject for the Second film?

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Originally Posted by Galendor

It remains possible that he "respected the books" for their popularity and apparent money-making potential, and not their literary merit.

I sincerely doubt that. Fantasy movies weren't such money makers before LOTR and Peter had a lot of trouble trying to get anyone to invest money in them.
Also, if that were true Peter would have accepted Bob Shaye's offer to direct only one LOTR film. But he declined and decided that he couldn't be involved in it as it'd be a travesty. So Bob Shaye decided to hand over the one film project to another director: unless PJ found another financier.

He did go to great lengths, but with millions of dollars to finance those lengths. Making movies is his vocation, appreciating the quality of fiction writing may not be his avocation.

It wasn't easy to get those millions, you know. And you would have to appreciate the source material in order to go to such lenghts to adapt it.