Believe it or not, there was a time when The Beatles wanted to star in a live-action adaptation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with Stanley Kubrick to direct. The cast would be Paul McCartney as Frodo Baggins, Ringo Starr as Sam Gamgee (both as hobbits), George Harrison as the wizard Gandalf, and John Lennon as the creature Gollum, but either Kubrick wasn’t on board for it or Tolkien killed it (it’s unclear which).

Obviously, that would have been an interesting project that unfortunately we’ll never get to see. But artist Shane Parker has decided to give us his depiction of what the Beatles in the LoTR could have looked like with his Abbey Road-LoTR mash-up “Moria Road.”

Parker’s take is slightly different than what the Beatles themselves has envisioned. While McCartney is still Frodo, Harrison is the elf Legolas, Starr is the ranger Aragon, and Lennon is wizard Gandalf (it looks like the Gandalf the White version of the character, though with the gray staff). In the image, the gang is walking single-file along an aged zebra-crossing road like the group did for their 1969 classic album Abbey Road. While McCartney was holding a cigarette on the album’s photo, in Parker’s version of his as Frodo, he’s holding the One Ring.

The image was one of the submissions in Super Punch’s art contest, where entrants were asked to create movie posters, concept art, custom toys, or any other work of art for “Stanley Kubrick’s Lord of the Rings, starring The Beatles.”

[Source: Zero Lives via Super Punch]