At Sunday night's Academy Awards, when the opened envelop revealed that "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" had just won adapted screenplay -- its ninth award of the evening -- New Line Cinema's Rolf Mittweg, president and chief operating officer of worldwide marketing and distribution, and Russell Schwartz, president of domestic theatrical marketing, knew that was the defining moment. "We just looked at each other incredulously," Schwartz says.

"By then, we knew all the obstacles had fallen away," confirms Mittweg of the sweep that was about to claim 11 Oscars.

For the two men, the moment also capped more than three years of carefully nurturing "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy to bring it to the attention of both an international audience as well as the members of the Academy.

In the beginning, Schwartz reports, only 20% of the moviegoing audience had a keen awareness of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, while another 50% had heard of them but had never read them. "We approached this in a very classic marketing mode," he says. "We had to make sure the fans of the books were on board, and we could then begin to build our audience from there."

Through its Web efforts, New Line began courting the fans. And at the 2001 Festival de Cannes, Mittweg unveiled 26 minutes of footage to prove to press and distributors that director Peter Jackson had the goods.

From there, it was a matter of plotting out a three-year campaign. "We viewed 'Lord of the Rings' as one story told in three parts, so it involved multiyear, multiphased marketing," Mittweg says.

For "The Fellowship of the Ring," the trilogy's first installment, the team emphasized epic adventure and took care to familiarize audiences with six of the principal characters. "The big issue was how to simplify the message so people didn't think it was a story with strange characters with funny names," Schwartz says. And, adds Mittweg, "because the cast was then comprised of actors who were not well known, the brand became the focal point."

Younger females proved resistant to the first film but then, probably through exposure to the DVD as well as the growing fame of its hunky stars, eagerly lined up for Part 2.

For "The Two Towers," the trilogy's second installment, the marketing introduced the new character Gollum and emphasized the filmmakers' achievement and the acclaim the trilogy was acquiring.

And for "King," the trilogy's finale, the marketing took yet a third tact. "We emphasized the emotional essence of the story and the resolution of the dramatic threads that were established in Films 1 and 2," Mittweg says.

Even though "King's" action centers on the massive Battle of Pellinore Fields, New Line purposefully de-emphasized the stampeding oliphants. "Instead, we highlighted the fact that, though Jackson was the general of this massive filmmaking army, he had not neglected the emotional truths," Schwartz says.

When it came to courting the Academy, New Line took pains to promote "King" as a stand-alone film rather than to suggest to Academy members that a vote for "King" was a vote for the whole trilogy. Ironically, though, "King" may have benefited from the fact that in the previous two years, rival campaigns had urged members not to vote for "Fellowship" or "Towers" but to save their vote for "King."

The final hurdle was convincing Academy members that a fantasy film deserved the Big O.

"In the beginning, when people referenced it as fantasy, they tended to treat 'fantasy' as if it was an F-word," Schwartz says. "But we decided early on we shouldn't run away from the word 'fantasy.' We said: 'Yes, it's fantasy, but it's also a great literary adaptation. It's got great performances and technical qualities. We took the definition of fantasy and expanded it, and I think that muted the argument.' "