They decided to do a live-action version of the Rankin-Bass animated Tolkien features, not a remake the Peter Jackson ones.
Where there's a whip, there's a way...
That song is a good one as was the entire animated film.
The Frodo of the Nine Fingers song from The Hobbit animated version was also spectacular. Pity someone else held the rights to the first two books.
There's a certain melancholy loveliness to the Rankin Bass animations. Flight of the Dragons and The Last Unicorn come to mind immediately. I recently rewatched the latter and it still held up well.