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A palantir in the hand is worth... - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

October 24, 2000 at 13:53:40

TheOneRing.Net has posted a scan of an August call sheet for Peter Jackson's 'The Lord of the Rings'. Although some folks are all excited about seeing that it was indeed Saruman (Xenite.Org suggested as much way back when), we noticed something we feel is more interesting.

The palantir is said to slip from Saruman's hand. In the literary story the palantir of Orthanc was about the size of a basketball.

Now, this picture has been widely debated and supposedly at one point even debunked as a hoax perpetrated by Peter Jackson upon an insatiably curious fandom. Hoax or not, the size of the palantir and the fact that Grima Wormtongue doesn't toss it out the window of Orthanc in this particular scene may set tongues awagging.