Random Things You Didn't Know About The Lord Of The Rings Films (35 items)

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  (#1) Gandalf Bumping His Head In Bilbo's House Was Not Scripted

  Gandalf's painful encounter with a ceiling beam in Bilbo's hobbit-hole was not in the script - Ian McKellen banged his forehead against the beam accidentally, not on purpose. But Peter Jackson thought McKellen did a great job "acting through" the mistake, so he kept it in.
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  (#24) Ian McKellen's First And Second Days Filming Were Gandalf's First And Last Scenes In The Film

  Ian McKellen's first day of shooting on the trilogy was Gandalf's first scene, arriving in Hobbiton. His second day of shooting was Gandalf's final scene of the film, at the Gray Havens.
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  (#19) Ian Holm Has Played Both Frodo And Bilbo Baggins

  Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo Baggins in the series, was the voice of Frodo Baggins in the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of The Rings.
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  (#12) Billy Boyd's Hobbit Scream In "The Fellowship Of The Ring" Was As Real As It Gets

  When the dragon firework goes off at the party, the shriek heard is Billy Boyd actually screaming, as he was unaware at the time that the firework was really going to explode on set (he thought that it would be put in digitally). It was not scripted, but that take ended up in the final cut of the film.
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  (#33) The Gollum Seen Briefly In "The Fellowship Of The Ring" Is Completely Different From The One In The Rest Of The Series

  The Gollum that is briefly glimpsed in The Fellowship of the Ring is an entirely different creation than the one that appears in the other two films. It was during the filming of the second movie that Peter Jackson realized that Andy Serkis's physical performance would have to be employed in the digital creation of Gollum. So Weta Digital had to alter the design of one of the lead characters in the film, scanning Serkis's face so that they would be able to incorporate some of his facial characteristics (the fact that Jackson had also filmed a flashback to be included in The Return of the King with Serkis playing the original Smeagol only cemented this decision). This ultimately meant, however, that Weta Digital had only two and a half months to redo two years' work. Serkis himself thought that the final result looked like a combination of his father and his newborn baby.
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  (#18) The Final Day Of Filming Took Place Months After The Third Film's Theatrical Release

  The final day of filming on the trilogy actually happened over a month after The Return of the King 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 of The Return of the King.

  He thought it was funny to still be shooting a movie that had already won the Best Picture Oscar.

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