The Lord of the Rings
The Motion Picture Trilogy – Extended Edition
Blu-ray
Directed by Peter Jackson
Starring Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom
Warner Home Video
Release date: June 28, 2011

If you want to turn a hit theatrical franchise into a long-term moneymaker in Hollywood, it’s all about the home video releases. Sequels or prequels are an often shaky proposition (see The Godfather, Part III and Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, for example.) If you or your company own one or more films with a solid cult following, however, home video releases can be the gift that keeps on giving, usually at reasonable cost and low risk to revenue. George Lucas is a proven master at this, hauling out a new home video revision of one or more of his Star Wars films that highlights some new video format, some different cut of the film (including a reversion back to the original theatrical release), some new documentary extra, or even a preview of some upcoming Star Wars project. Likewise Francis Ford Coppola has cut and re-cut The Godfather films into releases like The Godfather Saga and The Epic Godfather box set that added material and joined scenes in chronological order, as well as offer re-masters like The Godfather DVD Collection and The Godfather: the Coppola Restoration. Some studios and directors take this process even further with direct-to-video revisions of flawed but remembered chapters of well-known franchises like Paramount and Robert Wise did with Star Trek: The Motion Picture The Director’s Edition.

Director Peter Jackson has posted to his Facebook page the second production video blog from the set of The Hobbit movies in New Zealand.

This new video blog was shot at the end of the first block of filming just as many of the cast and crew were going off on break until September, so there’s interview footage of everyone saying what they are going to do during this time off. As you’ll see, Jackson will only be stepping back from directing, as he still has to do script rewrites, video editing, and location scouting, as well as other responsibilities. The video shows some of the beautiful locations they are looking into using, as well as new sets. There’s also some behind-the-scenes footage from the film, including Andy Serkis doing a motion-capture scene as Gollum (Serkis is also a second-unit director on the film), as well as a snippet of a scene with Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Elrond (Hugo Weaving).

Yesterday, the first image of some of the dwarves — Nori, Ori, and Dori — from director Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit.

Now, two more dwarves has been revealed with a first look at brothers Oin and Gloin from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Check out the photo above.

The photo shows John Callen as Oin and Peter Hambleton as Gloin.

Director Peter Jackson, who’s working in full force on The Hobbit movies, has posted a first look at some of the Dwarves from the first film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — the brothers, Dori, Nori, and Ori.

Check out the photo above (click for larger full, view).

The photo shows Jed Brophy as Nori, Adam Brown as Ori, and Mark Hadlow as Dori.

Not too long ago we saw the first peek at Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in director Peter Jackson‘s two-part prequel adaptation, The Hobbit, as well as our first look at Sir Ian McKellen‘s return to his iconic Gandalf the Grey character.

Now the movie is making its magazine debut, featured on the cover of Empire Magazine who fittingly got things rolling over a decade ago before most of us really knew that The Lord of the Rings (the Extended Edition Trilogy Blu-ray is out today!) was about to become in cinematic history.

You can see the Empire cover by continuing on below now, and as the magazine points out: “look closely for subtle differences in costume from his 60-year older Rings self” in regards to Mr. Gandalf.