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LOTR in Blu-ray, how fans could badly impact your marketing plans ?

Lord of the Ring, Blu-ray edition available on Amazon

What is LOTR ? that’s the acronym for the Lord of the Rings, the famous books from J.R.R Tolkien.The trilogy of Peter Jackson is finally announced in a Blu-ray edition. Blu-ray is the new HD video format, and as any new technology the early adopters can help to make it a success or a failure. Let me expose this interesting case. We have very special conditions there, in one hand a long-time awaited movie with a huge community fans ( I m kind one of them ), and in the other hand a new market with Blu-ray Players, HD TV, 2 fans group with high expectation is a blowing recipe and headache to manage. 

1 – 1st comment, the delay for the release of this trilogy has been too long, it was a quite recent movie with already a lot of post-processing done, a perfect candidate for the movie industry which could have actually helped the blu-ray players sales. That’s a first mistake but for sure, it was maybe more depending on the director than the studios themself. 

2 – The work needed to produce that HD / Blu-ray edition of the Lord of the rings was probably a little bit postponed due to the HD format wars, when it was not sure to see which format between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray could be the winner ( and by the way the Peter’s Jackson King-Kong was released in HD-DVD first )

3 – Let’s go back to the event… finally the Lord of the rings Blu-ray edition is announced with a release date 6th of April 2010, and while the previous comments from users and fans were pure speculation, the things are turning bad for the studios. Lock at Amazon page

http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Picture-Theatrical-Editions/dp/B000X9FLKM

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… and see the users’ review.. 2000+ reviews, an average rating of  only 1.5 / 5 ,  that’s lame and I remind the movie isn’t released yet. The rating and comments aren’t really about the movie ( which is excellent of course ), but about the anger of users to see a products which doesnt fit their expectation. Indeed, despite the long extended version has been releade in DVD, the Blu-ray edition is introduced only with a the original theater version. Users are loudly banning the product before it has been released. How could it affect really the sales of the product ? Are the fans will really wait, or they will buy it anyway. They will feel a lot of dissappointement and frustration but even with the theatrical version, it will ( I hope ) be a fantastic demonstration for the Blu-ray technology

4 – What will be the real sales trend of this edition ? Do you think most people will wait or not, or buy anyway a movie they probably have already in their DVD collection ? Do you think some other movies could lead such interests ? Some movies mark a milestone in the technology used and the visual effects, it was the case with the Matrix Trilogy for DVD, and it is with new Avatar from James Cameron for 3D

What is your opinion ? will you buy this version ? any other movies which lead some extra adoption of a Blu-ray player ?