Anna Daniels
That multi-billion-dollar take-home also doesn’t account for the surprisingly robust box office returns of Jackson’s follow-up trilogy that began with 2012’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Jackson was initially not meant to direct The Hobbit trilogy. Genre favorite (and future Oscar-winner) Guillermo del Toro was actually lined up to helm the new movies, a prelude to the central action in Jackson’s films. Sadly, studio shortcomings eventually left the project’s production in peril, and forced del Toro to vacate the director’s chair.
Against his own better judgment, Jackson ended up filling the empty director’s chair himself, and set out to bring the $700-million-dollar trilogy to the big screen in his own way. It’s clear throughout the Hobbit trilogy, however, that Jackson’s heart may not have been completely in the franchise anymore. The Bilbo Baggins-centric films largely proved sluggish to both fans and critics. Where the Lord of the Rings films all earned over 90 percent approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey came in at 64 percent, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at 74 percent, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies at a grim 59 percent.
Surprisingly, it seems that the Lord of the Rings fanbase was still quite eager to gorge on Jackson’s second Middle-earth trilogy — the one place the Hobbit films didn’t disappoint was at the box office. The three Hobbit films earned nearly $3 billion globally altogether, essentially doubling the Lord of the Rings‘ franchise total to a mind-blowing $5.9 billion.
Frankly, those numbers make the $250 million Amazon Studios doled out for rights to the upcoming Lord of the Rings series seem like a big-time bargain.
Written by: Looper
