Oh Lord! Does This Have a Familiar Ring? UPDATED

Having released The Lord of the Rings movies separately on Blu-ray, Roadshow Entertainment is about to bundle the Peter Jackson Oscar-winners as an HD trilogy with extras.

The release is scheduled for August 11 and will frustrate the Middle-earth faithful who snapped up the single releases without extras in April.

Curiously, the reverse strategy was adopted for Rings’ Northern Hemisphere Blu-ray release: The Motion Picture Trilogy came out first, and the separate volumes will go on sale there in September.

Roadshow has confirmed the Australasian Trilogy will have the same extras as the US and UK editions, which have been ported over from the DVDs of the theatrical movies and aren’t in HD.

So if you already own the single-disc Blu-rays, there’s probably not much point in adding the Trilogy to your collection; wait, instead, for the extended editions, although there’s still no word when these will be released on Blu-ray.

Meanwhile, Ain’t It Cool News has anonymously quoted Jackson as denying trade paper reports he will take over directing the Hobbit prequels: “I’ve always said that me directing was one option, and so that’s not really news.The studio are working out what that deal would look like, because how else do they know if it’s a viable option? But it’s honestly one of several different options – many irons are in the fire right now.

“What’s of great concern to everyone right now is trying to stay on schedule and not slip back another year, because we will start losing people – and that’s increasingly difficult as each day passes. A lot of people – both film makers and studios are working very hard right now, trying to get a positive outcome here.”