Before Peter Jackson made his Lord of the Rings films, many filmmakers tried and failed to adapt Tolkien. Projects by William Snyder, Peter Shaffer and John Boorman left only unproduced scripts and concept art, while Ralph Bakshi made an animated version of the first half in 1978 that was profitable but did not lead to a sequel. In 1995 Jackson and Fran Walsh tried to buy the rights, eventually going to Miramax, where Harvey Weinstein wanted the story cut to one film of about two hours. Jackson insisted on a longer, multi-film version and refused the cuts. Weinstein eventually put the project into turnaround, and New Line Cinema CEO Robert Shaye accepted it as a trilogy. The budget was raised after a 26-minute preview of The Fellowship of the Ring was shown at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.