In August of 1998, New Line Cinema announced that it was going to create the Lord of the Rings trilogy (based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien which was voted Book of the Century in 1997) as a movie to be released in December of 2001.
You can see the official site at: http://www.lordoftherings.net
The Lord of the Rings trilogy will be shot exclusively in New Zealand over a period of 18 months, with post-production adding yet another year and a half. At three years in the making, this will be the largest production ever to be mounted in the Southern Hemisphere. It will utilize over 20,000 days of extras, employ a full crew of over 300, and will feature 1,200 state-of-the-art computer generated effects shots.
The claim is that this movie will set a new box office record for ticket sales in the United States and replace one of the movies in the top 3 spots for ticket sales right now. The claim will only pay if the Lord of the Rings is ranked 1, 2, or 3 in all time box office sales by 12/31/2002.
The current ranking of the top 10 grossing movies:1 Titanic (1997) - $600,743,4402 Star Wars (1977) - $460,935,6553 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - $431,065,4444 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - $399,804,5395 Jurassic Park (1993) - $356,763,1756 Forrest Gump (1994) - $329,452,2877 Lion King, The (1994) - $312,775,3678 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - $309,064,3739 Independence Day (1996) - $305,400,80010 Sixth Sense, The (1999) - $293,501,675
I will use figures from Variety, the entertainment trade magazine to judge this claim.
I am assuming that this claim is meant to be primarily about the gross receipts of the film, not when the film is coming out. If the release of the any part of the Lord of the Rings Triloogy is delayed beyond December 2001, I will delay judgement of the claim and use the first 12 months of film receipts as reported in Variety for a period that may be reported in Variety as late as 2003-12-31. The figures for gross receipts will be applied to each part of the Lord of the Rings as a separate film(thus if any one movie of this Trilogy enters the top 3 grossing films within 12 months of its releaase date before 2003-12-31 this claim will be judged true).
RJB