Lord of the Rings Actors Visit The Beatles Story

The Beatles Story, Liverpool’s award-winning attraction, were delighted to welcome Lord of the Rings stars Elijah Wood and Billy Boyd to their exhibition over the weekend.

The stars were in the city to greet fans at Comic Con Liverpool in the Exhibition Centre on the waterfront, which ran from May 4th (Star Wars Day) to May 5th.

On arrival to The Beatles Story, which was his first stop after arriving by plane into the country, Elijah discussed his love of The Beatles with the exhibition’s team.

Elijah and Billy played hobbits Frodo and Pippin in the 2001 – 2003 movie trilogy Lord of The Rings, directed by Peter Jackson. Jackson has, more recently, been celebrated for directing and producing the 2021 Disney+ documentary series ‘The Beatles: Get Back,’ detailing the making of the Let It Be album using archive footage from January 1969. Jackson’s involvement with The Beatles still continues, with his restoration of the 1970 film ‘Let It Be’ set to be released on Disney+ on May 8th 2024.

The Lord of the Rings films were based on the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy book series of the same name – considered one of the greatest fantasy book series ever written.

In the 1960s, The Beatles had hoped to create a film adaptation of the fantasy book but were turned down by author Tolkien and by Stanley Kubrick, who had been approached to direct. Kubrick, instead, made ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and The Beatles explored animation in ‘Yellow Submarine.’

According to Variety.com, had all gone to plan, John would have played Gollum, Paul would have played Frodo, George would be Gandalf and Ringo Starr would have taken the role of Sam.