<P> After two years of attention and acclaim since the release of The Fellowship of the Ring, audience and critical anticipation for the final instalment was extremely high . The world premiere was held in Wellington's Embassy Theatre, on 1 December 2003, and was attended by the director and many of the stars . It was estimated that over 100,000 people lined the streets, more than a quarter of the city's population . </P> <P> The theatrical edition of the film was released on VHS and DVD on May 25, 2004 . The DVD was a 2 - disc set with extras on the second disc . The theatrical DVD sets for the two previous films were released eight months after the films were released, but Return of the King's set was completed in five because it did not have to market a sequel (the previous films had to wait for footage of their sequels to become available for a ten - minute preview). However, it contained a seven - minute trailer of the entire trilogy . </P> <P> The Return of the King followed the precedent set by its predecessors by releasing an Extended Edition (251 minutes) with new editing and added special effects and music, along with four commentaries and six hours of supplementary material, plus 10 minutes of fan - club credits . However, this set took longer to produce than the others because the cast and crew, no longer based in New Zealand for the trilogy, were spread all over the world working on other projects . The set was finally released on December 14, 2004 in the UK and US . The final ten minutes comprises a listing of the charter members of the official fan club who had paid for three - year charter membership . </P> <P> A collectors' box set was also released, which included the Extended Set plus a sculpture of Minas Tirith and a bonus 50 - minute music documentary DVD, Howard Shore: Creating The Lord of the Rings Symphony: A Composer's Journey Through Middle - earth . The DVD has a DTS - ES soundtrack . The DVD also features two humorous Easter Eggs, one where Dominic Monaghan plays a German interviewer with Elijah Wood via satellite and another where Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller attempt to convince Jackson to make a sequel, originally shown at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards . Both can be accessed via a Ring icon on the last page of both Disc 1 and 2's scene indexes . In August 2006, a Limited Edition of The Return of the King was released . This Limited Edition contains two discs; the first is a two - sided DVD containing both the Theatrical and Extended editions of the film . The second disc is a bonus disc that contains a new behind - the - scenes documentary . </P>

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