LOTR: Return Of The King Is Back On Max After Surprise Removal

2024 started off on a sour note for some Lord of the Rings fans, as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King's extended edition--considered by some to be the definitive version--was recently unceremoniously dumped from Max, the streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is back online, however, and you can stream it now.

GameSpot has learned that the removal of Lord of the Rings: Return of the king Extended Edition was the result of a technical issue that the team at Max worked to rectify to get the title back online.

The extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers remain available to stream on Max, and did not vanish alongside The Return of the King's extended edition. The theatrical versions of all three films are on Max as well. People on social media complained about the absence of Return of the King's extended edition when it was briefly removed. Some said they started the lengthy film in December and attempted to resume watching in 2024 only to find the 11-time Oscar-winning movie to be removed from the catalog.

Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and other popular streaming platforms publicize lists of titles set for removal ahead of time, to help users avoid getting surprised when a movie or show is set to be dumped. Max does this as well, but Return of the King's extended edition was not printed on the "leaving" list for January.

Before this, Max made headlines when the service removed the Watchmen series in 2023 without any prior warning. This was only an accident, though, and it was reinstated very quickly. Return of the King's extended edition, however, was missing for more than 24 hours.

WBD is purposefully removing some titles from Max as a means to make more money by licensing them to other streaming services. If the entire Lord of the Rings series was axed from Max, that could be theoretically understandable as a business decision. The fact that only the extended edition of one film in the series got dumped is understandably raising questions and causing some concern. But it was only a technical issue that has now been fixed.

Another oddity for Lord of the Rings movies on Max is that there are two versions of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers listed as being the extended edition. Only one of them is actually the lengthier extended edition, however.

Anyone who owns The Lord of the Rings on DVD or Blu-ray can of course continue to watch the movies, and some might point to a case like this as an example for why physical media could be a worthwhile investment. The entire trilogy, including extended editions, were updated in 4K in 2020.