The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Andy Serkis and Elijah Wood were each given prop rings by Peter Jackson used in the movie. They both thought they had the only one.

To get enough extras for the Battle at the Black Gate, a few hundred members of the New Zealand Army were brought in. They apparently were so enthusiastic during the battle scenes that they kept breaking the wooden swords and spears they were given.

Since John Rhys-Davies suffered constant rashes from wearing the Gimli make-up, the make-up department gave him the opportunity to throw his Gimli mask into the fire on his last day of pick-up photography. He didn’t hesitate a moment to grab and burn it.

The final day of filming on the trilogy actually happened over a month after this movie was theatrically released, and three weeks after the 2004 Academy Awards. Peter Jackson arranged to film one final shot of skulls on the floor in the tunnel of the Paths of the Dead, which was included in the Extended Edition DVD. He thought it was funny to be doing filming on a movie that had already won the Best Picture Oscar.

The movie made a 1,408% profit for New Line Cinema on their initial outlay.

The last spoken line of the movie, “Well, I’m back,” is also the last line of the book.

So unpleasant was Peter Jackson‘s experience in dealing with Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein, when the film was being developed at Miramax, that their shared credit at the end of this film appears over a pencil sketch of a man fighting off two oversized trolls.

Billy Boyd‘s singing scene largely came about because co-writer Philippa Boyens went for a night out at a karaoke bar with the younger male cast members, and she was struck by the quality of his voice. Remembering that Denethor asks Pippin to sing him a song when Faramir heads off to war, she resurrected the lyrics from the novel (where it is actually sung by all four hobbits), and Boyd came up with the tune for it.

Elijah Wood is noted for his ability to stare fixedly in front of him for ages without blinking, which came in very useful for the scenes where the comatose Frodo was wrapped up in Shelob’s web-like cocoon.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy became the most nominated film franchise in Academy Award history with thirty nominations, surpassing The Godfather trilogy (twenty-nine) and the Star Wars film franchise (twenty-one).

According to a magazine article, Peter Jackson hated the Army of the Dead, thinking it was too unbelievable. He kept it in the script because he did not wish to disappoint diehard fans of the book.

Viggo Mortensen estimates that during the course of filming the trilogy, and including all of takes, he “killed” every stuntman on the production at least fifty times.

It has the highest perfect score at the Academy Awards, with eleven wins out of eleven nominations.

Facts and numbers about the trilogy: Over six million feet of film was shot during production; 48,000 swords, axes, shields, and make-up prosthetics; 20,602 background actors cast; 19,000 costumes made by the wardrobe department; 10,000 crowd participants at a New Zealand cricket game who made orc army grunts; 2,400 behind-the-scenes crew members at the height of production; 1,600 pairs of prosthetic Hobbit feet created; 250 horses used in one scene; 180 computer visual effects artists employed; one hundred fourteen total speaking roles; one hundred real locations in New Zealand used for backdrops; fifty tailors, cobblers, designers, and others in the wardrobe department; thirty actors and actresses trained to speak fictional dialects and languages; seven total years of development for all three movies.