From an older post's OP's comment:
Before the LOTR movies were released in 2001, a company named Decipher made a CCG based on the films, and was given early access to the reams of film that Peter Jackson had produced, more than made it into the films itself.
In this weekly series of posts, we will take a look at some of these cards to shine a light on the scenes we never got. This week, we'll sail off into uncharted waters and take a look at the so-called Book Cards, depicting characters and concepts developed by Weta Workshop for characters cut from the films.
In 2003-2004, Decipher partnered with Weta Workshop (the special effects team that worked on the Lord of the Rings films) to create representations of characters that had been cut from the films at one stage or another. Some like the infamous Tom Bombadil had been chopped right from the start, while others like Radagast had actually gone as far as costume tests and casting before being dropped.
Daniel Falconer of Weta was tasked with resurrecting old concepts and repurposing various on-screen costumes and prosthetics for use in the Book Cards, and in a flurry of about a month managed to leverage the expertise of Weta Workshop to produce the images on the cards shown above. Radagast's old costume was brought out of storage, with a new staff created just for this project, and other props and costumes were repurposed: Arwen's wig went on Elladan/Elrohir, Theodred's armor went on Erkenbrand, and an old rejected Gandalf concept was dyed blue and became Tom Bombadil's coat, with a Hobbit hat on top.
Decipher then took the final product and placed them on the Book Cards, and the rest is history. It's an interesting look into what could-have-been, in particular for characters which would years later show up in the Hobbit films, such as Radagast and Dain Ironfoot.
There's many more tidbits and details for this particular batch than can be recorded here, as Decipher released a series of articles on the development process including more behind-the-scenes photos and an interview with Falconer. A summary with links to the 4 BTS articles can be found on the LOTR-TCG wiki here: https://wiki.lotrtcgpc.net/wiki/Weta_Book_Cards
(If you are interested in checking out the game as depicted on these cards, you can play the LOTR-TCG in your browser! See https://play.lotrtcgpc.net/ and https://lotrtcgpc.net/discord )
These cards took my interest not long after the movies came out because I read The Hobbit and saw Dain Ironfoot's card in the movie style. I hoped back then that some spinoff footage with him is available somewhere.
