The Lord of the Rings is a series of three epic fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson, based on the novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien. Considered to be one of the biggest movie projects ever undertaken with an overall budget of $280 million, the entire project took eight years, with the filming for all three films done simultaneously and entirely in Jackson’s native New Zealand. The films are subtitled The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). It is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential film series ever made.
J.R.R. Tolkien typed 1,200 pages worth of text for the books with just two fingers
Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf because he didn’t understand the script
An entire action scene was destroyed by a flood
The end of The Fellowship of the Ring originally featured a scene where the heroes are ambushed by a band of Orcs as they row through rapids on the Anduin river. “We had all kinds of action planned with boats flipping over … and Legolas’s boat afloat as it bucks and tosses, while the Elf—standing with a foot on each of the gunwales—would be firing arrows at the attackers,” Jackson shared. But Mother Nature had other ideas, and a massive flood—in addition to causing a state of emergency in Queenstown, New Zealand—washed the entire ambush set down the river.
The Hobbits’ foot makeup took longer than an episode of “Game Of Thrones“
Gandalf bumping his head in Bilbo’s house was not scripted
Gandalf’s painful encounter with a ceiling beam in Bilbo’s hobbit-hole was not in the script – Ian McKellen banged his forehead against the beam accidentally, not on purpose. But Peter Jackson thought McKellen did a great job “acting through” the mistake, so he kept it in.
