By the late 1970s, there were two major animated adaptations of The Lord of the Rings in development. Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, known for their holiday season specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, had directed an animated dramatization of The Hobbit for television, broadcast in 1977 and they were planning a sequel, also for television, based on The Lord of the Rings. But filmmaker and animator Ralph Bakshi beat them to it in 1978 when he directed an animated feature film, The Lord of the Rings, which he intended to be Part 1 of 2. The studio (United Artists) refused to put Part 1 on the title though, and never greenlit Part 2. Instead, Rankin and Bass released a made-for-television sequel to their Hobbit film under the title The Return of the King, which finished off J.R.R. Tolkien‘s epic story.

The Rankin/Bass Hobbit film is seriously underrated these days,...