Elijah Wood says it was a financial “gamble” to star in ‘The Lord Of The Rings’

Elijah Wood has admitted it was a financial “gamble” to star in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

The actor, who played Frodo Baggins, said in a new interview, that New Line Cinema took a “real gamble” filming all three movies simultaneously without knowing how the first would fare at the box office.

To mitigate financial risk, he said the ensemble cast were offered “not massive salaries,” as a result.

“Because we weren’t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn’t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life, he told the Business Insider.

“The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever,” he added.

When asked about rumours that he was paid $250,000 (£190,000) for The Fellowship Of The Ring, Wood disputed the figure, but didn’t share more. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

The trilogy had a budget of $281million (£220million) and made $2.9billion (£2.3billion) worldwide.

Wood’s co-star Cate Blanchett, who played Galadriel in the movies, recently claimed that “no one got paid anything’ to film the trilogy, despite it being one of the highest grossing film franchises of all time.

In response he said her comment was “hilarious” and but it was made in jest.

“Statements like that are not made with any kind of ire. It’s such an honour to have been a part of those films and they represent some of the best experiences of my life,” he added.

Other stars of the franchise have expressed how relatively little they received for their appearances in the film in recent years. Speaking to The Howard Stern Show in 2019, Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas in the trilogy, revealed he was paid $175,000 (£137,000) for his appearance in all three films.

Meanwhile, The Lord Of The Rings franchise is set to continue in a number of new Middle Earth projects, recently confirmed by Warner Bros., starting with a 2026 film tentatively titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Screenwriter Philippa Boyens recently confirmed the spin-off will not be split into two parts.

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