We're mere days away from the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. (You can read my review here.) For Deadspin, I decided to look back at the Lord of the Rings trilogy to marvel at how completely unlikely its success really was. (Interestingly, some commenters have said things like, "C'mon, everybody loves those books. Of course they were going to be huge hits." Then how come other big properties, like the Chronicles of Narnia, never quite took off?)
By the way, if you haven't read (or re-read) Gillian Flynn's 2001 Entertainment Weekly story about the making of the trilogy, it's definitely worth your time. Beyond being well-reported, it really does capture the uncertainty of this whole enterprise -- remember, the piece came out before The Fellowship of the Ring, back when no one knew if Rings would flop or not.
