It was 20 years ago (ish) :: Empire magazine publishes The Lord of the Rings: A Celebration, a special booklet enclosed with the magazine's January 2004 issue, which was released in December 2003. The booklet carried interviews with the principal cast of the LOTR trilogy as well as a significant amount of the creatives involved. The photography was taken in Watford, New York, Wellington, London, Sydney, Los Angeles, Surrey, Melbourne, and Vancouver between February and October 2003. Shown here:
Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Elijah Wood (Frodo), Billy Boyd (Pippin); John Rhys-Davies (Gimli/Treebeard), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), Sean Bean (Boromir); Orlando Bloom (Legolas), Sean Astin (Sam), Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn); Miranda Otto (Eowyn), Andy Serkis (Gollum/Smeagol), Liv Tyler (Arwen); Bernard Hill (Theoden), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Karl Urban (Eomer); Hugo Weaving (Elrond), David Wenham (Faramir), and Cate Blanchett (Galadriel).
[Note: Dominic Monaghan's photo here is an outtake; the actual shot in the booklet can be seen here. These photoshoots provided several excellent outtakes that I'd be happy to share if there is interest.]
[ The Wellington premiere of ROTK | Air Frodo from NZ to LA | Los Angeles | Berlin | London | New York (1) | New York (2) ]
“Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.”
I’ve decided that the funniest way to cast a Muppets LotR movie would be for every hobbit to be played by a human, and for every single other character to be played by a muppet. They’re still call halflings, and they’re still talked about as though they’re smaller than everyone else but they are very much noticeably taller than almost everyone (except characters played by full-sized muppets)