What happened to all the items from LOTR?

It’s probably in a warehouse somewhere, waiting to be reused in another fantasy movie somewhere down the line.

Or to be auctioned off just in time for the 20th ANNIVERSARY RE-RELEASE SPECTACULAR!

Peter Jackson’s hobbit hole.

Much of it was simply destroyed. Whole sets can be destroyed (see the replica of Titanic as a prime example).

Some items get reused… if anyone remembers the movie “Dark City”, the rooftop set used in a chase scene in that film was reused one year later for Trinity’s rooftop chase scene in the movie “The Matrix”.

Yeah, it will probably be reused for a remake of Barefoot in the Park or something.

Stolen by rouge LARPers

What’s a LARPer?

A LARPer would be a Live Action Role Player.

What a fascinating question! GQ for you. I hope somebody actually knows the answer to this—i.e., with respect to the LOTR artifacts specifically. All those tankards, shields, robes…wow. Not to mention the hairy-foot prostheses and the orc heads.

Most movie sets, costumes, props, etc are broken down to be possibly used in future productions. It’s much like live theatre – things are stored in prop rooms, costume shops, etc. I’m sure that after the success of the films, some of the props and whatnot have been saved to be sold/displayed.

Interesting, @TM. I watched hours of “special features” with the deluxe boxed set of LOTR, which was a gift to my son a few years ago. There was a lot of footage documenting how they designed and created props for each of the cultures, species, etc. It didn’t seem like they were reusing anything, or they didn’t tell us if they were.

Hmm… I know that a lot of films do, maybe they just didn’t. I worked with a photographer who had a stylist who worked in the movie industry a lot and talked about this kinda stuff. Maybe it’s because LOTR uses such specific things that they couldn’t reuse things? And remember that they break things down as well, to the point that it might not be the same thing when built again.