15 Most Highly-Anticipated Blockbuster Movies In History

Peter Jackson's jaw-dropping work on The Lord of the Rings series had seen the franchise comfortably escape the shackles of appealing only to those familiar with the the source material to become a global success story, with the first two installments combining to rack up $1.8bn at the box office, rave reviews and six Academy Award wins from nineteen nominations.

The world premiere of Return of the King took place in New Zealand's capital Wellington in December 2003 and over 100,000 people turned out on the streets. To put things in perspective, that was roughly a quarter of the city's population at the time.

It wasn't just a localized phenomenon either, the franchise had transcended the fantasy genre entirely to become movies that everybody just had to see, and the release of the trilogy-closing chapter had become one of the biggest cinematic events in history in the run-up to its release.

Living up to even the loftiest of expectations, the final chapter cemented the Middle Earth saga as one of the all-time great trilogies, yet still somehow managed to defy expectations from both a critical and commercial standpoint.

Becoming just the second movie to ever earn over $1bn at the box office, The Return of the King also completed a clean sweep at the Academy Awards, winning all eleven categories in which it was nominated including Best Picture and Best Director, ensuring that the trilogy would go down in history as one of Hollywood's greatest ever filmmaking achievements.