As we reported earlier, today is The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit day at Comic-Con 2012 (aka #HobbitCon) and LEGO® was kind enough to send us this exclusive image of a brand new ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey‘ Playset! The set is called ‘An Unexpected Gathering’ and features Bag End with six mini-figures. As you can see in the image above, we have Bofur holding an axe, Bombur with a sausage and knife, Dwalin wielding a really large weapon and knife, Balin with chalice, Gandalf the Grey with walking staff, and Bilbo Baggins. As you can see the set is highly detailed with greenery, vegetables and much more. From the looks of the image we’ll have a nice inside component to play with as well. Stay tuned as we report more from Comic-Con 2012! [Live Coverage]
Category: Movie Return of the King
In this article, The New Zealand Herald’s Helen Frances speaks to Weta concept designers and illustrators Ben Wootten and Paul Tobin about how they got their starts in the industry.
Wootten joined Weta in 1996, and has worked on King Kong, The Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His knowledge of animal anatomy and behavior (he studied zoology at university) was key to creating the dinosaurs for King Kong.
Paul Tobin began his career at Weta Workshop in 2003 when the first Narnia film and King Kong were underway. Tobin says he was “lousy at drawing dinosaurs” so he stayed with Narnian fantasy. His background in ancient history and archaeology proved the inspiration for concept designs for Peter and Edmund’s armour and weapons and Susan’s horn.
Read more here. Photo by Steve Unwin.
Sideshow Collectibles Online Comic-Con event is in full swing and day 13 brings us the first pre-order for a collectible from 
Middle-earth. The next statue in The Lord of the Rings statue line is the Twilight Witch-king statue! It is a superb looking mirror image of the Ringwraith statue released a while back. This statue gives fans a chance to pair this up with the Ringwraith and show what both Frodo as well as the other Hobbits/Strider saw while on Weathertop. This outstanding statue costs $275 with a $27 NRD but you have time to save up as this won’t release until March of 2013. [Pre-Order]
The Folks at Weta Workshop via their Facebook page Weta Workshop delivered a great teaser image of the upcoming environment Barad-Dur: Fortress of Sauron. This sure-to-be-amazing collectible will be unveiled to the world at Comic-Con in just a little less than a week’s time. Until then Weta is allowing fans to follow the process in bringing this collectible to the market place with a series of articles entitled Overcoming the Fear: Barad-Dur-Fortress of Sauron. Stay tuned to TORn as we bring you all the pictures, video, and information on what will be a must have for any The Lord of the Rings fan.
Sideshow Collectibles via their Sideshow Experience page announced with a production peek, the Dark Lord Sauron Premium Format. This video shows us some great images of the detail this collectible will have as well as give us a great idea just how LARGE this piece will be. Hopefully, Sauron will be making the trek to Comic-Con 2012 where we can get a real look at how amazing this piece will be. Until we have more information make sure you check out the production peek video at least once or twice.
Weta Workshop has finally answered a long-held wish for fans who collect The Lord of the Rings. For years fans have been 
asking for a diorama consisting of the nine walkers as they trekked from Rivendell to Mordor to destroy The One Ring. Well, now we get the first set in completing the collectible many of us has wanted with set one of The Fellowship of the Ring set 1. This set is scheduled to ship in quarter four of this year and come with a price tag of $200. Weta states that announcements for the other two sets will happen in 2012.