Christopher Lee - not in RoTK?

[PrinceOfTheHalflings]

Originally Posted by Huscarl

I'm sorry if this topic has been raised a 1000 times (I searched the board first, honest!), but why was Lee not in the third installment, or at least why was his part completely cut?

I'll let Peter Jackson answer this himself:

"The problem is that the sequence was originally shot for The Two Towers, as it is in the book. Since The Two Towers couldn't sustain a 7 min "wrap" after Helm's Deep, we thought it would be a good idea to save it for the beginning of the Return of the King. The trouble is, when we viewed various ROTK cuts over the last few weeks, it feels like the first scenes are wrapping last year's movie, instead of starting the new one. We felt it got ROTK off to an uncertain beginning, since Saruman plays no role in the events of ROTK (we don't have the Scouring later, as the book does), yet we dwell in Isengard for quite a long time before our new story kicks off.

We reluctantly made the decision to save this sequence for the DVD. The choice was made on the basis that most people will assume that Saruman was vanquished by the Helm's Deep events, and Ent attack. We can now crack straight into setting up the narrative tension of ROTK, which features Sauron as the villian. "

from: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=16462