Lord of the Rings: Remembering the Box Office Records Broken By Return of the King

On December 17, 2003, the trilogy came to a close. Two years after the first live-action Lord of the Rings film series began with The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King debuted in theaters domestically and around the globe. It was a sensational film event: all three of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books had now been adapted into live-action epics, and they’d all been filmed in an audacious manner (simultaneously) that could’ve easily turned the production into a boondoggle of unspeakable proportions. Instead, director Peter Jackson and company pulled off a gargantuan endeavor that previously only existed in the minds of fantasy geeks everywhere.

With The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim now hitting theaters, it’s as good a time as any to look back on just how big of a box office powerhouse Return of the King was when it first hit North American theaters. The various box office records Return of the King shattered make it perfectly clear how moviegoers from all walks of life couldn’t get enough of the “final” Middle-earth adventure.

Return of the King broke box office records right away

Like many pre-2010 December tentpoles, Return of the King opened on a Wednesday. This meant that it never had much of a chance of dethroning Spider-Man’s 2002 domestic opening weekend record of $114 million. After all, that film didn’t burn off demand with Wednesday and Thursday showings! On its first day of domestic release, Return of the King grossed $34 million domestically, by far the biggest single-day gross ever in December and the largest Wednesday in history up to that point. Among all opening days, only Spider-Man and fellow 2003 tentpole The Matrix Reloaded had larger grosses. After just 24 hours of North American play, Return of the King was already a record-shattering hit.

After the dust had settled on the first five days of Return of the King’s worldwide box office run, it grossed a staggering $250.1 million globally. At the time, Box Office Mojo reported it’d set new opening weekend records in countless international territories, including the United Kingdom and Germany. Its five-day North American gross stood at $124.1 million, $72.6 million of which came from its three-day weekend bow. That was more than enough to claim the biggest December opening weekend ever domestically from The Two Towers. Each Lord of the Rings movie had established a new record December domestic opening…why wouldn’t Return of the King have kept up the tradition?

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By the time January 2004 was drawing to a close, Return of the King surpassed the $339.7 million domestic haul of Finding Nemo to become 2003’s biggest movie domestically. It would be another month before Return of the King shattered the $1+ billion mark worldwide. Today, that’s a common threshold for movies to hit in their global box office runs. At the dawn of 2004, though, only Titanic had ever exceeded the ten-digit mark at the worldwide box office. Return of the King finally gave it some company in that esteemed territory when it became the first non-James Cameron movie to clear $1 billion.

The Overall Box Office Importance of Return of the King

Return of the King’s gargantuan box office run set a slew of other smaller records, including scoring the biggest Christmas Day box office haul at the time and becoming by far the biggest New Line Cinema title ever. In hindsight, though, one important distinction it provided was proving Titanic was no fluke. Other movies can and would clear $1+ billion worldwide. What was sensationally unique in early 2004 is now commonplace in today’s cinematic landscape. Return of the King’s worldwide appeal and massive box office haul paved the road for the 2024 status quo.

Return of the King also created a gigantic shadow future Middle-earth movies couldn’t hope to evade; of the three Hobbit movies of the 2010s, only The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey cleared $1+ billion worldwide and it still didn’t come close to matching RotK‘s $1.141 billion global cume. Future tentpoles set in this universe like The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will undoubtedly contend with this issue, as well. Once you’ve reached the mountaintop, it’s hard to be satisfied with “just” a $750-850 million worldwide haul… and that’s before considering how much Return of the King made when taking inflation into account!

Decades later, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’s opening weekend and daily box office records have been shattered multiple times over. Heck, at least two modern December 2024 tentpoles have made more than twice as much as Return of the King’s ultimate domestic gross; however, these early box office milestones still stand out as impressive – especially since they cement how momentous these Lord of the Rings movies were back in the early 2000s. Only a series resonating so profoundly with people could rewrite the box office rules in such a vivid manner.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is now in theaters.