Hobbit Revolt

This is interesting: Warner Brothers is releasing the Peter Jackson "Lord Of The Rings" movies on Blu-Ray later this year, with the theatrical versions all together in one rather pricey package. You'd think fans would be exstatic, but Amazon's pre-order site has nearly 40 pages of negative reviews, almost all of them written by people upset that the Blu-Ray release is a repeat of the "double-dipping" marketing of the standard DVDs several years ago. In that case, each movie's DVD release was followed a few months later by a much more extensive (and in my opinion, significanly improved) expanded version with about an hour more footage per movie and a vast selection of supplimental material.

Having already paid twice for the much of the same footage, the movies' fans are none too happy about being expected to pay two more times for higher definition versions, and are demanding a unified Blu-Ray release instead of another double-dip. Given the Hollywood mentality of squeezing every drop of revenue out of a "franchise," I doubt the complainers are going to change WB's marketing plans, but it'll be interesting to see how (or if) the company responds to an online revolt.