Many adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, an epic by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien, have been made in the media of film, radio, theatre, video games and recorded readings. Motion pictures Early attempts to adapt Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings were made by Walt Disney, William Snyder, Forrest J. Ackerman, Denis O'Dell (who considered Richard Lester to direct, but approached star directors David Lean, Stanley Kubrick and Michaelangelo Antonioni instead), Peter Shaffer, John Boorman and George Lucas. These attempts resulted in some unproduced concept art and scripts, original fantasy films like Excalibur and Willow and an animated short of The Hobbit. Three cinema adaptations have been completed. The first was The Lord of the Rings by the American animator Ralph Bakshi in 1978, the first part of what was originally intended to be a two-part adaptation of the story. The second, The Return of the King in 1980, was a television special by Rankin-Bass. The third was The Lord of the Rings film trilogy by the New Zealand director Peter Jackson in the early 2000s, released in three installments as The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. A Swedish live action television film, Sagan om ringen, inspired by the music album Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings by Bo Hansson was broadcast in 1971. A Finnish live action television miniseries, Hobitit, was broadcast in 1993 based on the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. A live-action TV special of The Hobbit was produced in the Soviet Union in 1985, a pilot for an animated Hobbit series in 1991, and a live-action television play of The Fellowship of the Ring, Khraniteli has newly been discovered and uploaded in Russia's Channel 5 YouTube Channel in 2 parts. The adaptation had been aired in Russia once and was thought lost. Radio Tolkien's novel has repeatedly been adapted for radio both in the United States and in Europe, from soon after its publication in the 1950s onwards. In 1955 and 1956, the BBC broadcast The Lord of the Rings, a 12-part radio adaptation of the story. The Fellowship of the Rings was adapted as six 45-minute episodes, then The Two Towers and The Return of the King together were compressed into six 30-minute episodes. Tolkien disparaged this dramatisation, referring to the portrayal of Tom Bombadil as "dreadful"