Recently Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro hosted a chat to discuss the upcoming Hobbit and bridging movie – which will link The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings movies – with their fans.
During the chat, the inevitable question about releasing the LOTR movies on Blu-ray was asked.
Click here to access the entire chat transcript.
In regards to the new movies Jackson and del Toro certainly gave all the right answers to the fans and their partnership seems destined to produce two movies of spectacular proportions. During the chat the question was asked:
“Will the Ring trilogy get a blu-ray release around the time of Hobbit? or sooner?”
Peter Jackson responded:
“We are working on a blu ray version of the LOTR trilogy with Warner Bros at the moment, not sure when it is due for release. It certainly won’t be this year.”
So it appears to be a good news, bad news situation. The movies are being worked on but the release date is still undetermined.
If I had to guess my feeling is that the parties involved may hold off on a BluRay release until 2011 when The Hobbit premieres in theaters. Note – this is pure conjecture on my part but it certainly makes sense from a business/marketing point of view.
Ideally, the release would happen next year and would include the extended editions as well as the theatrical versions within the same release.
The extras presents an interesting conundrum. Should the BluRay releases include all the previously released extras, all new extras, a mix of the two, and should they be redone in Hi-def?
There is likely to be little consensus on this matter. My preference would be for everything released to be included and redone in High Def. Plus anything new that Peter Jackson wants to release. Hey, why not? That way no one would have to hang on to all their SD discs.
Stay tuned for further details as they emerge…
