(A point raised occasionally: no, this is not a purely movie thread.)
In the very early 1950s, when JRRT had had a spat about publication with Allen & Unwin and was negotiating with Collins for publication, he once estimated that LoTR and The Silmarillion were of approximately the same length. And that with the terribly confused state that the Sil stuff was in at the time! No wonder Collins (now HarperCollins - they finally did end up with LoTR!) balked. As we now know, the 1977 Sil that was published, edited by Christopher Tolkien, was at best as long as one of the three volumes (not books!) of LoTR. And the (mostly) Silmarillion monster published as "History of Middle-earth" in twelve volumes (subtract four for the history of LoTR) is vastly larger.
