It’s been a couple of years since Peter Jackson finally completed his lengthy quest to Middle-earth. But the Hobbit trilogy has never been packaged together with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy – until now.
All six films in Jackson’s adaptation of the classic fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien are being assembled in an enormous 30-disc Blu-ray giftset, given the lofty title of ‘Ultimate Collector’s Edition’. And they're the extended editions, of course, meaning the whole saga would take around 18 hours to watch in total, by our calculations. That’s not even counting the many, many hours of special features, commentaries and Easter eggs.
Most of us will have already bought many of these films in various incarnations, on various formats – so to sweeten the deal, this release is packaged in a sort of faux-leather book case (with a design “selected by Peter Jackson”, no less), and includes a replica of the ‘Red Book Of Westmarch’, the book that Bilbo and Frodo wrote in the films, plus exclusive artwork and other nik-naks.
The price for all of this elaborate Middle-earthery? $799.99 is the price at Amazon US – roughly £609.70 in old money. Time to start gambling a few gold doubloons at the Prancing Pony. The Middle-earth Ultimate Collector’s Edition is due to be released on 4 October in the US; there’s no word yet on whether it’ll make it across the pond.