Although he was later keen to regroup with Boorman for his script (and his surrogate project, "Excalibur"), Bakshi claimed Medavoy didn't want to produce his film at the time, but allowed him to shop it around if he could get another studio to pay for the expenses on Boorman's script. Bakshi attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Peter Bogdanovich to take on the project, but managed to gain the support of the then president of MGM Dan Melnick. Bakshi and Melnick made a deal with Mike Medavoy at United Artists to buy the Boorman script. Bakshi said later that "The Boorman script cost $3 million, so Boorman was happy by the pool, screaming and laughing and drinking, 'cause he got $3 million for his script to be thrown out." Boorman, however, was unhappy with the project going to animation after Tolkien once wrote to him, pleased that he was doing it in live-action. He never saw Bakshi's film, and after it was released, tried to remake his live-action version with Medavoy.