FILM · 2003 · NEW ZEALAND
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
- Directed by
- Peter Jackson
- Runtime
- 201 min
- Studio
- New Line Cinema, WingNut Films, The Saul Zaentz Company
37 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
As armies mass for a final battle that will decide the fate of the world--and powerful, ancient forces of Light and Dark compete to determine the outcome--one member of the Fellowship of the Ring is revealed as the noble heir to the throne of the Kings of Men. Yet, the sole hope for triumph over evil lies with a brave hobbit, Frodo, who, accompanied by his loyal friend Sam and the hideous, wretched Gollum, ventures…
Summary: TMDB
All facts (37)
- #001
The Lord of the Rings was the first production in which three separate films were written and shot at the same time, excluding pick-up shoots.
- #002
Peter Jackson considered The Return of the King the easiest of the three films to make, because it contained the climax of the story.
- #003
Between January 1997 and August 1998, The Return of the King was planned as the second of two films under Miramax Films, in roughly its finished structure, with the first film ending at the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers.
- #004
Filming for The Return of the King took place across New Zealand with multiple units between 11 October 1999 and 22 December 2000, followed by six weeks of pick-up shoots in 2003 before the film's release.
- #005
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King's Middle-earth look was chiefly designed by Alan Lee and John Howe, both of whom had previously illustrated editions of Tolkien's books.
- #006
Weta Workshop produced all weapons, armour, miniatures, prosthetics and creatures for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with Richard Taylor heading the company.
- #007
The sets of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King were constructed by the Art Department, while Grant Major and Dan Hennah oversaw planning and building.
- #008
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King shows Minas Tirith in full, along with the civilisation of Gondor, after the city appeared only briefly in the two earlier films.
- #009
For The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, an enormous soundstage was constructed at Dry Creek Quarry outside Wellington, reusing the set built for Helm's Deep.
- #010
The gate of the Helm's Deep set served as Minas Tirith's second gate in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, while the Hornburg exterior was reused for the Extended Edition scene in which Gandalf confronts the Witch-king.
- #011
New structures built for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King included an 8m tall Gate with broken and unbroken versions and a working opening and closing mechanism, its engravings inspired by the Baptistry of San Giovanni, plus four levels of streets with heraldic motifs for every house, inspired by Siena.
- #012
The exterior of the Citadel in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was built on the Stone Street Studios backlot using forced perspective.
- #013
The withered White Tree seen at the Citadel was constructed from polystyrene by Brian Massey and the Greens Department, using real branches and modelled on ancient, gnarled Lebanese olive trees.
- #014
The Citadel's interior was filmed inside a three-storey former factory in Wellington, with colours inspired by Charlemagne's Chapel, a stone-carved throne for Denethor and polystyrene statues of past kings.
- #015
Gondorian armour in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was designed as an evolution from the Númenóreans of the first film's prologue, with a simplified sea bird motif and inspiration from 16th-century Italian and German armour, while civilians wear silver and blacks designed by Ngila Dickson.
- #016
Minas Morgul, the Staircase and Tower of Cirith Ungol, and Shelob's Lair were designed by Howe for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
- #017
Howe's design for Minas Morgul drew on his experience of having a wisdom tooth removed, reflecting how the Orcs imposed their twisted designs on a former Gondorian city.
- #018
Cirith Ungol was initially based on Tolkien's design, but Richard Taylor found it boring, so it was redesigned with more tipping angles.
- #019
Shelob was designed in 1999 for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with the spider's body based on a tunnelweb spider and its head featuring numerous growths that Peter Jackson's children selected from one of many sculpts.
- #020
Peter Jackson, an arachnophobe, took great joy in planning the Shelob sequence for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
- #021
Shelob's Lair in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was inspired by sandstone and sculpted from the existing Caverns of Isengard set.
- #022
The Return of the King depicts the Dead Men of Dunharrow with a Celtic influence, and their underground city draws on Petra; their lines and symmetry were designed to reflect their morbid state.
- #023
The Haradrim in The Return of the King were initially influenced by African culture, but after Philippa Boyens raised concern about possible offensiveness, the finished characters instead drew on Kiribati bamboo-weaving armour and Aztec jewellery.
- #024
A single dead mûmak was built for The Return of the King.
- #025
The Return of the King gives the Corsairs an exotic, swarthy look, while the Grey Havens are Elven structures adapted to stone with influence from J. M. W. Turner paintings.
- #026
Hobbiton, the home of the Hobbits in The Return of the King, was shot in January 2000 alongside early scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring, with the exterior filmed at a Matamata farm and interiors at Stone Street Studios in Wellington.
- #027
The high emotions of filming a scene in The Return of the King left the cast in despair when they had to shoot it three times, first because of a continuity flaw in Sean Astin's costume and then because negatives produced out-of-focus reels.
- #028
During a charge sequence for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the scale doubles for Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd were also a source of concern.
- #029
Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Andy Serkis filmed the Mount Doom exteriors for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at Mount Ruapehu. They spent two hours there shooting Sam lifting Frodo onto his back with cross-camera coverage.
- #030
Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd shot numerous takes of their entrance in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, stressing the word "weed" as they smoked pipe-weed.
- #031
The Ride of the Rohirrim, in which Théoden leads a charge into the Orc army, was filmed in Twizel for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with 150 extras on horseback.
- #032
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King relied more heavily on computer-generated imagery for the Battle of the Pelennor Fields than the second film had for the Battle of Helm's Deep, which used more live-action.
- #033
Production on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was hectic, with Peter Jackson moving around ten units per day, and it wrapped on the Minas Tirith sets while second units were still shooting parts of the siege.
- #034
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King shot its 2003 pick-ups in the Wellington studio car park, where sets and blue-screens were used to complete scenes. The design team worked 24 hours to have the correct sets ready for a given day.
- #035
Pick-up filming on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King lasted two months and became an emotional period of farewells for the cast and crew. The film holds the trilogy's most extensive list of re-shoots.
- #036
Peter Jackson took his time re-shooting Aragorn's coronation for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which had been rushed into a single day on 21 December 2000 under second unit director Geoff Murphy.
- #037
Peter Jackson also re-shot scenes in and around Mount Doom and Théoden's death for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, right after Bernard Hill was meant to wrap.
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