The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is seemingly headed back to theaters in April to celebrate the movie’s 20th anniversary. Multiple movie theater chains, including Regal and Cinemark, have updated their websites with showtimes for Return of the King. Based on the listings, it appears Return of the King will come back for a limited time beginning April 13.
Cinemark’s website states that the runtime is 4 hours and 20 minutes, so it seems the theater will show the extended version of Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning epic. That’s good news because for many, the extended edition is the best version, even if it is very, very long.
Return of the King opened in theaters in December 2003, so its 20th anniversary isn’t actually until later this year, but any good Hobbit would want to celebrate early and often.
All three The Lord of the Rings movies came back to theaters in 2021 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series and their 4K remastering. Exact ticket prices have not been confirmed for Return of the King’s re-release.
Return of the King swept the Oscars, winning 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Peter Jackson, among other accolades. Jackson followed up those films with a Hobbit trilogy, and while it was not as adored critically, the three movies earned billions at the box office.
As such, it’s not a big surprise that Warner Bros. Discovery just recently announced plans for additional The Lord of the Rings movies. It’s still early days, but for now, you can check out GameSpot’s breakdown of everything we know about the new Lord of the Rings movies.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
