The Lord of the Rings film trilogy released three films between 2001 and 2003.
The films are The Fellowship of the Ring, released in 2001; The Two Towers, released in 2002; and The Return of the King, released in 2003. They form a continuous adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings, which was published as three volumes for publication purposes.
Director Peter Jackson and his production team filmed the trilogy largely as one enormous project in New Zealand. Releasing the installments annually allowed audiences to follow the story while the later films were completed in post-production. This schedule also helped the trilogy maintain a unified cast, visual design, and musical identity.
The count is sometimes confused by the separate extended editions, which add footage but are not additional films. The later Hobbit movies are also set in the same fictional world, but they belong to a different three-film series and are not part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.