Is the LOTR Blu-Ray due sooner than we think? (1 Viewer)

If you have been following the saga of 'The Music of The Lord of the Rings films' book written by Doug Adams to accompany the Complete Soundtrack recordings, you will know that the book is long over due!

Visiting Doug's blog today I noticed there would be more delays.

The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films

"As of right now, we're no longer considering November, 2008 as a potential release date."

Then this rather cryptic statement got me thinking.

"We now have the chance to tie it in to another major release."

At first I thought this was The Hobbit, but that is too far off, the book is finished and should be out this Christmas.

So what if this tie-in opportunity is the Blu-Ray release of LOTR?

May be it is not that far away and might arrive Spring next year!

It'd be great if it was but I'm sure they'll wait for The Hobbit release for that book and the Blu-rays of the movies.

I saw this on Adams' blog and was thinking the same thing as Nick. There's no way he's talking about The Hobbit - the book is done and that film is three years away. The only other "major release" I can think of is LotR BDs - but I don't think it's going to happen in Spring. It's going to be the 2009 holiday season before we see any of this happen.

That said, I'm a bit disappointed in this announcement. With the book being postponed, this will be the first holiday in 8 years without a new LotR release of some kind:

2001: FotR (Theatrical)
2002: TTT (Theatrical); FotR (Extended DVD)
2003: RotK (Theatrical); TTT (Extended DVD)
2004: RotK (Extended DVD)
2005: FotR Complete Soundtrack
2006: TTT Complete Soundtrack
2007: RotK Complete Soundtrack

It's disappointing as i was looking forward to the book.

I will have to agree with Craig. I would expect LOTR BD to be released during the holiday season next year. Any earlier and I would be one of about a million or so happy people

Spring is optimistic, I agree.

You would think Doug would have been more disappointed having to delay his book by a year.

LOTR on Blu-Ray in 2009 is good enough for me, even if it is not till November.

I thought I read over at The Digital Bits that LotR wouldn't hit Blu-ray until The Hobbit hit the theaters...yes, we'd have to wait about 3 years...

Mike

Update: According to The Digital Bits we might be ssing the trilogy soon!

I'm happy to be wrong but it looks like that insert says "The Fellowship Of The Ring" so I'm guessing it's going to go one movie at a time (which will no doubt bring protests) but at least The Bits says that they'll all be out in 2009.

Awesome to see the original King Kong on there too.

Why does my gut tell me Christmas 2009?

I can also think of a few movies that were announced on DVD in the early days especially, that took YEARS, or still have not come out.

Hey i want it, i want it bad. But i will keep the little skeptic in me, so i wont be shocked if it doesnt happen.

Nothing more than a guess but since that insert lists FOTR (rather than the trilogy), I think that we'll see them broken up over the course of the year. Maybe the first one in spring, the second in summer and the third and the three pack in the fall for Christmas.

+1

Marek

I know the video encode was done a long time ago (during the format war). They did one encode optomized for a HD30 and one for a BD50. Bad news is it is the theatrical version.

I think they need to offer both the theatrical and extended cuts via seamless branching. Personally, I'm only interested in the theatrical cuts. As much as I like some of the additions in them, the extended cuts feel a little uneven and there are certain bits that simply don't work for me at all. The theatrical cuts aren't perfect, but I feel they're tighter and more satisfying. How about some sort of option to create your own cut of the movies? It'd be cool to be able to insert some additional scenes but omit others. Surely with BD-J this would be possible, with the option of saving your preferences if your player allows it.

Ultimately, both cuts should be made available from the outset, but I suspect they are going to put out just the theatricals first. If so, they'd better look and sound spectacular. Some 'touching up' of visual effects might be in order. The films already look a bit dated, and one feels that a lot of the compositing was rushed in the mad scramble to get the films released into theatres on time. If Peter Jackson ever wanted to pull a George Lucas, now would be a good time.

Nothing would please me more than to see the Rings films on Blu-ray. Particularly the first entry-The Fellowship...but only in it's extended version. Once you have that, there's simply no going back. It's easy to say one won't buy this but I truly won't get this unless it's the extended versions. The Fellowship-EE is one of my top 3 films of all time. The added 30 minutes to that film made it a Masterpiece.

Surely, after all this time and the formats ironed out...New Line/Warner would give us both entries????

Other than the original Star Wars Trilogy, the LOTR films are my most anticipated Blu-ray WANTS.

I think it's been pretty well argued that they will not be able to offer the LoTR versions via seamless branching. There were simply too many scenes put in and/or edited/extended/changed around, which completely changed the music cues and transitions. If they offer both cuts, they will have to be on separate discs [although both discs could be in one package].

great news indeed

Didn't they already do that on the most recent DVD release?

Exactly what I was thinking! Surely if they've presented both cuts of the movie via seamless branching on regular DVD (albeit split over two discs) then doing the same on a BD-50 shouldn't be out of the realms of possibility. Going one step further, I see no reason why it shouldn't be possible for viewer's to create their own cut of the movie. I mean, doesn't seamless branching just involve having a bunch of different angles and audio tracks which the DVD player is instructed to switch between on-the-fly? Why not have a menu screen with a list of video thumbnails and tick-boxes, so the viewer can decide whether to include the gift giving scene but omit the dodgy introduction to Lothlorien, where the makeup and costumes were all subtly different because the scene was shot really early in production and these things weren't finalised yet?

I doubt it'll ever happen, but it's something of a deal-breaker for me. While there's a lot of good - nay, great - stuff in the extended cuts, there's also a lot of bad stuff that was cut out for good reason. I don't want to watch a bloated epic each time. Give me the option of the theatrical, and everything else is gravy as far as I'm concerned.

I hope no disc ever lets someone do that. No matter how good or bad a movie or a scene is, no viewer should be allowed to 'fix' someone else's movie.