Lord of the Rings Box Office: Every Film's Gross and Budget

The Lord of the Rings box office record covers seven theatrical films, and the six main films earned about $5.9 billion worldwide on budgets that add up to about $981 million, according to Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. All six were directed by Peter Jackson. The seventh film, the animated spin-off The War of the Rohirrim, is a much smaller story and has its own row in the table.

Box Office Mojo supplies the figures for the three Lord of the Rings films, the grosses of The Desolation of Smaug and the grosses of The War of the Rohirrim. The Numbers supplies the budgets of all three Hobbit films and The War of the Rohirrim, plus the grosses of An Unexpected Journey and The Battle of the Five Armies. The two sites differ slightly on some totals, so each film follows one site throughout.

The original trilogy grossed about $2.98 billion worldwide, which is the sum of the three films' Box Office Mojo figures. The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) opened the run at $898 million, The Two Towers (2002) took $945 million, and The Return of the King (2003) closed it at $1.14 billion. Each film earned more than the one before it. A reported $270 million covered the production of all three films, which Jackson shot at the same time in New Zealand, starting in Wellington in October 1999.

The Hobbit box office comes to about $2.91 billion worldwide across three films, a little below the earlier trilogy despite a far larger outlay. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) grossed $1.01 billion, The Desolation of Smaug (2013) grossed $959 million, and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) grossed $940 million. The budgets were $200 million, $250 million and $250 million, so the Hobbit films cost about $700 million to make against roughly $281 million for the first three.

There are three films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the wider Middle-earth saga has six main films plus one spin-off. The three Hobbit films sit alongside the trilogy, and The War of the Rohirrim (2024), directed by Kenji Kamiyama, is the animated spin-off. The full count is on how many Lord of the Rings movies there are.

Two Middle-earth films passed a billion dollars worldwide: The Return of the King at $1.14 billion and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at $1.01 billion. The other four main films each landed between $898 million and $959 million. The franchise totals come from the sets, with the original trilogy at about $2.98 billion and the Hobbit trilogy at about $2.91 billion.

No, every figure quoted here is nominal, meaning the dollars earned at the time and not restated for inflation. That matters for comparisons, because the 2001 to 2003 films earned their money a decade before the Hobbit films, so an inflation adjusted list would lift the older trilogy by more.

The War of the Rohirrim grossed $20.8 million worldwide against a $30 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. It opened in December 2024 and is the only Middle-earth film to finish below its production cost. For where each film fits in the story, see the Lord of the Rings timeline and the Lord of the Rings movies in order guide.

Yes, by any reasonable measure the Lord of the Rings films were a box office success, and in my opinion the original trilogy is the more impressive of the two runs. The Fellowship of the Ring turned a $93 million budget into $898 million, a return of roughly ten times, and The Return of the King turned $94 million into $1.14 billion, a return of about twelve times. The three Hobbit films returned between roughly four and five times their budgets, which is still a healthy result but a different order of profit.

The direction of travel is the most telling detail. Worldwide grosses rose with each film in the original trilogy, from $898 million to $945 million to $1.14 billion, and the domestic figures climbed the same way, from $326 million to $350 million to $387 million. The Hobbit moved the other way, falling from $1.01 billion to $959 million to $940 million, with domestic takings sliding from $303 million to $258 million and then $255 million. It could be argued that audiences were rewarding a story that kept building in the first run, while the second run asked them to follow a slighter book stretched across three films, but that is interpretation and not something the numbers prove.

The split between home and abroad also separates the two sets. About 36 percent of The Fellowship of the Ring's gross came from the United States and Canada, and about 34 percent of The Return of the King's. For The Hobbit the domestic share was nearer 30 percent for the first film and about 27 percent for the other two. As such, the Hobbit trilogy leaned harder on international audiences, perhaps because the earlier films had already built the brand worldwide.

Cost is where the franchise changed most. Jackson shot the original trilogy concurrently, and the reported cost of about $270 million for all three films is roughly what one later Hobbit film cost on its own. The Hobbit films were also shot in digital 3D at 48 frames per second in New Zealand. If you want one number to remember, The Return of the King is the film to cite: it holds the franchise high of $1.14 billion and, as a footnote, won all 11 of its Oscar nominations in 2004, including Best Picture, according to the Academy.

The War of the Rohirrim is a smaller case, and I would not read much into it. An animated spin-off set 183 years before the trilogy, voiced by a cast that includes Brian Cox, Miranda Otto, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, was always going to run at a different scale, and its $20.8 million worldwide against $30 million is a modest result and not a verdict on the animation or the story. For how the films compare as films, see our Lord of the Rings movies ranked.

The next chapter is The Hunt for Gollum, dated for December 17, 2027 by Warner Bros. and New Line, with Variety Australia reporting in July 2026 that filming is under way in New Zealand. The date has already moved once, from 2026 to 2027, so treat the schedule as firm for now but not guaranteed. If you want to see the cast and crew behind these grosses, the Lord of the Rings cast page is the most useful next stop, and the Lord of the Rings movies hub links to everything else.