Among the many interesting conversations I had at Dragon*Con, I heard that there is a Lord of the Rings board game under development. While this is completely unconfirmed, I was told the designer of this new game was Reiner Knizia. You can see some of Reiner’s previous work at the ReinerSpiel page.
Update: You can read slightly more about this game at:
BoardGames.about.com. So I guess this is out of the rumour stage. 😉 There is a link on that page to where there was once a picture and description of the game, but alas the information has been removed. If anyone can read German and find where on that site the info is please let me know.