Three Tolkien films, one shoot: how New Zealand made Middle-earth at once
Peter Jackson did not film The Lord of the Rings one instalment at a time. All three parts were shot together in New Zealand across roughly fourteen months, on a budget of $281 million, and the finished trilogy went on to earn more than $2.9 billion and 17 Oscars.
The trilogy adapts J. R. R. Tolkien's novel, borrowing both its titles and most of its plot from the book's three volumes. The Fellowship of the Ring arrived in 2001, The Two Towers in 2002 and The Return of the King in 2003. New Line Cinema produced and distributed the films, with Jackson's own company, WingNut Films, as co-producer.
Principal photography ran from 11 October 1999 to 22 December 2000 in Jackson's home country, and extra pick-up shots followed between 2001 and 2003. Shooting everything in one campaign made it among the largest film undertakings ever attempted; the $281 million budget would equal about $543 million in 2025 money. Each premiere went to a different city: London's Odeon Leicester Square in December 2001, the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York a year later, and finally the Embassy Theatre in Wellington on 1 December 2003. Longer extended cuts reached home video roughly twelve months after each cinema run.
The story follows the hobbit Frodo Baggins, charged with destroying the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron. After the fellowship breaks apart, Frodo presses on toward Mordor with his devoted companion Sam and the untrustworthy Gollum as guide. Elsewhere Aragorn, exiled heir to Gondor's throne, joins Legolas the elf, Gimli the dwarf, the hobbits Merry and Pippin and the wizard Gandalf to rally resistance, a campaign that runs through the siege of Helm's Deep and the Ents' assault on Saruman's stronghold at Isengard.
Critics and audiences rank the series among the most influential ever made, though how closely it follows Tolkien has long been argued over. Across the three films it collected 30 Academy Award nominations and won 17, with Best Picture going to The Return of the King. Two decades on, in 2021, the Library of Congress added The Fellowship of the Ring to the National Film Registry.
Source: The Lord of the Rings (film series)
