15 Movie Sets You Didn't Know Were Hell To Work On

2. The Hobbit Trilogy

Why It Was Hell: Kicking things off badly, Warner Bros. rushed Peter Jackson through pre-production to the shooting stage, and when the project was expanded from a duology to a trilogy, it hugely expanded the crew's workload without prior warning. Also, the orcs being changed from live-action to CGI mid-way through shooting caused several big scenes to be re-shot, a cliffhanger had to be shoehorned into the end of the second movie causing many actors to have no idea what they were doing, the Kili-Tauriel-Legolas love triangle was studio-mandated, and Jackson was essentially railroaded into editing the third film differently from his own vision. Was It Worth It?: $2.9 billion in box office receipts says a resounding "yes", and even though none of the three movies could match the critical acclaim of the Lord of the Rings films (scoring "only" 7 Oscar nominations between them compared to Rings' 30 nominations and 17 wins), they have all received broadly positive reviews nevertheless. An exercise driven more by money than artistic intent, but a hugely successful one nevertheless.