Te Papa staging the return of the rings

The exhibit tells how Gollum was created

While director Peter Jackson has moved on from the Lord of the Rings films and remade King Kong, his fellow Wellingtonians can't leave the Tolkien movies behind them.

An exhibition of Rings memorabilia opened at Te Papa on Good Friday, and the crowds have flocked in for a return season of the show which first time around was the most popular in the national museum's history.

More than 8000 people have seen the exhibition in the past four days.

When it first went on show at Te Papa, in December 2002, 1600 people saw the show on its opening day, so if the exhibition can continue to attract such crowds it could threaten its own visitor record of 220,000 people.

"A lot of the people who have come so far are return visitors who saw it the first time and are saying that it's even better than the first time around," Te Papa communications manager Bridget MacDonald said.

The exhibition, which toured to London, Boston, Singapore, Houston, Indianapolis and Sydney after its Wellington debut, features several new attractions from the multi-Oscar winning The Return Of The King. They include Aragorn and Arwen's coronation costumes, Gandalf the White's robes, and a large scale miniature of the Gondorian city Minas Tirith.

Other material on show not seen before in New Zealand includes fresh interviews with cast and crew about the technical wizardry that brought Middle Earth to life, and displays explaining how digital creatures Gollum and Shelob were created.

The exhibit runs until August 20.