I never thought this would happen, but the boys over at FilmRot.com have dug up a story from Home Media Retailing that indicates the Lord of the Rings trilogy is headed for a DVD double dip.

New Line plans to re-release the films in two-disc “Limited Edition” sets that contain new, exclusive behind the scenes documentaries with over 300 minutes of so far unseen footage. Perhaps New Line hasn’t seen the previously released Extended Editions which already contain more behind the scenes material than is probably healthy. I don’t think I can handle another one. I certainly don’t need it.

The real hook to this unneeded release I guess is that these “Limited Editions” will somehow contain both the theatrical version and the extended edition which had previously only been available in separate sets. While that might seem impossible, given that these sets are only two discs apiece, apparently they’ll do it by presenting the Extended Edition in a branching format. So you’ll start watching the theatrical version and there will probably be some sort of pop up button asking if you want to branch to an extended scene or not. If you’ve ever seen the Extended versions, you know that this is not the way to watch them. They’re better as a seamless piece of film, and in fact Peter Jackson went to a lot of trouble to present them that way in the first place. Now it looks like New Line is taking a step back, chopping them up, and basically turning the Extended Editions into a bunch of lame deleted scenes as a gimmick to sell more DVDs.

I really don’t think anyone is going to buy this. Maybe I’m wrong. Fans tend to buy just about anything thrown at them with the name of something they like slapped on it. But I’d like to think Lord of the Rings fans are pretty happy with what they’ve got already. Lord of the Rings is done, the DVDs are done, and we don’t need any more.