New LicenseThe latest edition of the Sideshow newsletter announced a new format of LOTR collectibles: “Next week, you’ll get your first glimpse at the newest LOTR collectible series; The Lord of the Rings Diorama line. Many of the designs for these dioramas have been drawn from the most dynamic and dramatic confrontations in the films, although not all will be so conflict-oriented. The size and scale will vary, as well as the complexity and price, but many will be in approximately 1:9 scale, not unlike the Sideshow/Marvel ‘VS’ line of dioramas.” [Full Details]

Jerry Vanderstelt writes: I am a commercial artist, and I recently secured a license through New Line to produce LOTR lithographs based on the movie trilogy. I am hoping to create some buzz before my release and get a link about this news from your site to mine. I have done several official LOTR projects for New Line, as well as their licensors. Please check out my website for more info. [More]

TheHutt writes: During their TotalHD press conference at CES, Warner announced that New Line was working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. While they did confirm that the titles were in the works, no details were given. A source close to the matter gave us a few details of the upcoming release, these include:

  • Main feature will be a single DL disc on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. (no word if it will be a TotalHD disc (TotalDVD is a double-sided combination of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray)
  • The movies will be the Theatrical Versions of each film.
  • Both discs will be encoded using VC1
  • These will be the first titles to use Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Audio
  • Due to bandwidth constraints, as of now there will be no IME (“In Movie Experience”) like features.