Elijah Wood defends meagre pay packets on Lord of the Rings

Elijah Wood has revealed that the Lord of the Rings trilogy did not result in a big payday for the cast.

"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," Wood explained to Business Insider at the 2025 Texas Film Awards.

Wood, who played Frodo Baggins, said that the film's director Peter Jackson and production company took "a real gamble" adapting JRR Tolkien's novel in 1999.

One of the sacrifices was that the cast, which included Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom and Cate Blanchett, would not be granted "massive salaries".

The first project garnered huge success, but because all three films were shot back-to-back, there was no time for the stars to renegotiate their contracts in between.

The three films made a huge profit from 2001 to 2003. Between The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King, the franchise brought in $2.9 billion (£2.1 billion) worldwide, making it one of the highest-earning film franchises in movie history.

"The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever," Wood added, defending his low paycheck as "understandable".

"It doesn't matter," he concluded.