The Lord of the Rings Ring" and part of "The Two Towers". A three-issue comic book version of the movie was also published in Europe (but not printed in English), with illustrations by Luis Bermejo. When Bakshi's investors shied away of financing the second film that would complete the story, the remainder of the story was covered in an animated television special by Rankin-Bass. Stylistically, the two segments are very different. The second and more commercially successful adaptation was Peter Jackson's live action "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, produced by New Line Cinema and released in three instalments as "" (2001), "" (2002),
Production design of The Lord of the Rings film series Production design of The Lord of the Rings film series The Lord of the Rings film series began its production design in August 1997. Peter Jackson required complete realism and plausibility in his vision of Middle-earth, and hired Weta Workshop to create the various pieces of armour, weapons, prosthetics and creatures seen in the trilogy, as well as aged costumes and historically influenced sets. Jackson began storyboarding the trilogy with Christian Rivers in August 1997, effectively creating a rough black and white 2-D version of the film. Jackson showed excerpts of the "animated" storyboards (filmed images with voices and a