Peter Jackson talks LORD OF THE RINGS on BLU-Ray
This is a bit of new news, you may have already knew. But this you will know now... no?
Back in April we reported that The Lord of The Rings Trilogy would be hitting the market in all of it's Blu-Ray high definition glory. What pissed us off though, was that no release date has been set, which is still the case. Amazon already has it available for pre-order. You wanna know how many stars it's been given? Out of 970 reviews, 1 and what seems like 1/4 star. 1 1/4 stars?!
The reason it's been rated so low, is because New Line has pulled this crap before. Back when LOTR first came out on DVD, we'd buy it up, wait about a year before the extended box set came out, only to buy that version as well. You'd either e-bay the theatrical release, or giving a half ass Christmas gift was made a whole lot easier that year.
Well, it looks like we're going to have to suffer the same fate. Collider spoke with Peter Jackson at Comic-Con on the subject. And here is what he reports:
[Jackson] told me the first editions to hit Blu-ray are going to be the theatrical versions and a year later we’d get the extended editions. The only good news is he told me the studio has started talking to him about doing some new extras for the Blu-ray extended editions. No word on exactly what the new stuff might be.
Even more special features? Wow! It would take up my entire day viewing all that stuff before. It looks like I'll have to take it in doses this time.
The extended editions put back cut scenes, or extended scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor, due to it's 3 hour run time. The extended editions ran about 4 hours long, give or take. And almost all of the special features for the films were reserved exclusively for those additions.
On the surface the extended edition sounds like something only for the geekiest of the geek. But the extended releases are much better rounded films than their theatrical counter parts. Many sub plots are put back in, little things you didn't understand are explained, and most importantly, characters are developed further. Return of the King is the only one where I don't favor the extended edition, as the new bits felt like gags, and it just made it too too long. But if you want those hours of special features (detailed making of/commentary) you're gonna have to get the Extended.
They will likely time the release of the Extended Editions, to coincide with The Hobbit movie.