The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Background

Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Ian Holm and Andy Serkis head the cast. The Dark Lord Sauron seeks the One Ring, which holds part of his might, and the Ring has come to the hobbit Frodo Baggins, who sets out with eight companions for Mount Doom in Mordor, the only place it can be destroyed.

New Line Cinema financed and distributed it, but it was filmed and edited entirely in New Zealand alongside the other two parts. It premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 10 December 2001 and opened in the United States on 19 December. Critics and audiences hailed it as a landmark of the fantasy genre; it took $868 million in its first run, second among 2001's releases and fifth of all time at that point, and has since reached $897 million.

Of thirteen Academy Award nominations it won four: Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects. The American Film Institute placed it among the 100 greatest American films in 2007, and the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 2021. The Two Towers and The Return of the King followed in 2002 and 2003.