I don’t think you needed the all-seeing eye of Sauron to predict the arrival of Transformers on Blu-ray. After all, now that the high definition format wars are over, it was pretty much a guaranteed release After all, who would pass up the opportunity to double dip on one of the biggest franchises out there?

Actually, Lord of the Rings has already seen three standard DVD releases (theatrical, extended edition, and special edition), so the term “double dip” is already a bit of a misnomer. Somewhere, someone is happy that the high definition format wars have been resolved so LotR has an easy excuse for another release without resorting to something stupid like the “Precioussss” edition.

The bad news about the Lord of the Rings Blu-ray release is that, although Peter Jackson has confirmed plans are in the works, nothing solid has been announced as of yet. Jackson’s own words in his recent online interview with Guillermo del Toro (which we reported on here) is ”We are working on a blu ray version of the LOTR trilogy with Warner Bros at the moment, not sure when it is due for release. It certainly won't be this year.”

Jackson’s comment was in response to a question about whether we’d see Blu-ray versions of the trilogy in tandem with The Hobbit or sooner. I can’t imagine Warner Brothers would be okay with waiting until The Hobbit hits theaters to cash in (again) on this franchise, although I imagine that “Precioussss” edition idea will look pretty good at that point. Until then, know that a Blu-ray version of the LotR trilogy is in the works, with more information to come in the future.