Or I'll eat them.

No, I didn't know it was going to announced today either, but guess the word is out!

More later. :)

November 22nd it is, then! Fantastic, thank you for the news!

On the plus side I'm not forking out 100+ bucks at once though

Thanks Doug!

--Brian

any word on release dates for the other two?

I guess Doug's the only one around here who's sure though.

Gee, and here I figured the press release would answer questions rather than spawn them! :) Ok, let’s see if I can shed a little light:

>>>I don't want to moan over this press release, I really don't, but why isn't there a short statement about the other two releases? I didn't expect release dates, but at least how far apart they'll be released. >>>

That’s an easy one. The dates aren’t yet set. There’s a rough idea, sure, but nothing solid. There’s nothing more dangerous than putting a date in a release months ahead of time, only to look like a fool when something changes. Hey, as of yesterday, I thought Fellowship would be out on the 15th not the 22nd, so see, things shift!

>>>On the plus side I'm not forking out 100+ bucks at once though>>>

Exactly right! I’m guessing (and I stress “guessing,” so don’t hold me to this too strictly) that Fellowship will retail around $60 or so. (I think I’ll say that again… I’m guessing! Please don’t yell at me if I’m wrong.) Considering that Fellowship is the shortest of the three scores, triple that cost then add a few 10s to it. That’s not just a bad commercial decision, it’s a bit cruel to the consumer. And believe it or not, they really do care about that. As I’ve been working on the notes I was told, look if you go past X number of pages, its going to increase the consumer’s cost by X number of dollars. We don’t want to force you to cut things you don’t want to cut, but likewise we don’t want to abuse the customer. We will give you control over content, but please understand that this is important to us. I thought that was a classy move in more than one way.

With the releases staggered, hopefully no one’s going to have to take out a second mortgage to afford everything.

>>>any word on release dates for the other two?>>>

You should probably have everything within a year.

>>>I thought Doug said at one point this wouldn't be a packaged release for all 3? As I said don't expect TTT and ROTK to come out until sometime in 06.>>>

I just want to reiterate here, there is NO gouge-a-thon three-film boxed set coming out. After Fellowship comes Two Towers then Return of the King. Oh, and I hear there’s a book to be released in there somewhere as well! But THIS is the ultimate edition. They’re not going to put out a 14-disc set the next year that has 4 extra minutes of music.

And finally, thanks so much to everyone that has put up with my “Gee I wanna tell ya, but I can’t tell ya,” antics for so long. And thanks to everyone that will continue to put up with them for the next year or so, because this is just getting started!

It would be interesting to know if the music on the DVD will be presented in a special way; you know, with music videos or something like that.
I have to tell you that this move was kind of surprising for me. I always thought there would be some kind of featurette on that DVD.
And when the 9 disc set rumor was still floating around, I thought that maybe the LOTR Symphony would be on it.

And while we're on the subject: wasn't the Symphony supposed to be released as a 2- disc set as well?

Boy, now that I think of it: has there ever been a movie score blessed with more brilliant Soundtrack releases (if you put aside Star Wars)?

I believe that this will be the mother of all film score releases, Star Wars won't be able to hold a candle next to these once they are all in our grubby little mitts!!!

Clayton

I don't have SACD/DVD-A capabilities though.

Star Wars had markers for each cue.

Empire put adjacent cues together, but maintained a fairly reasonable marker count.

Jedi put adjacent cues together and went overboard, meaning that favorite cues such as "Into the Trap" and whatnot were buried inside voluminous tracks.

Doug, any idea when we can see pictures of this release, packaging, disc art, etc? Track listings? Streaming samples? Is it a good chance that soundtrack.net will have a first listen like they did with the OSTs? Only 8 weeks to go!

Back in the days when it was said that a 9 disc set was in the works that there would be a disc containing unused or alternative tracks? I think Peter Jackson himself might have commented on this but don’t quote me on that.

I was wondering if this was still going ahead now that each score is to be released separately and if so, is the 3rd disc on this set possibly dedicated to unused/alternative tracks for FOTR. I was also thinking that this could also get round the issue of the music that was altered between TE and EE versions of the film.

And 10 minutes or so per disc for unused/ alternate material.

Prefer the idea of unused material being included in the main body of the album where it was intended anyway.