Ready to return to Middle Earth in extreme HD? Looks like you’ll have an opportunity to do exactly that around the Christmas window this year, as news has been dropping of an upcoming 4K Ultra HD re-release of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies on Blu-ray. That news hasn’t been directly confirmed or announced by Warner Bros. or New Line Cinema just yet, but given that pre-orders are already starting to appear at vendors such as Best Buy, we’re guessing that someone may have jumped the gun.
Best Buy is already listing a steelbook for The Lord of the Rings 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays, as well as The Hobbit 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays steelbook as well. Both carry apparent price tags of $119.99, and the street date is listed (for the moment anyway) as Dec. 1, 2020. That would certainly make sense, as the studios would no doubt want the steelbooks to be available for Christmas buying and gifting, much like the LOTR Extended Editions were upon their original releases.
Speaking of those Extended Editions: We don’t know if those versions of Peter Jackson’s LOTR movies are included, or whether these are only the standard theatrical versions. We are still missing a lot of information, in fact, such as final audio mix or HDR grade, but that information will surely be included once this announcement is made official. You can see some initial images of the box set below via Best Buy, which suggests each film is getting 3 discs in the set—guaranteed to be packed with many of the same extras as the Extended Edition DVDs from almost 20 years ago, no doubt.
Oh … and you’ll be able to buy new versions of The Hobbit as well, we guess. You know, if that’s the sort of thing you’d want to do. We’d understand it if you only picked up that LOTR steelbook.
Keep an eye out for more information on these, as it will surely be dropping soon.
