The Hobbit Trilogy 4K UHD Extended & Theatrical (2012-2014)

[hm83]

Originally Posted by BeyondLogic

So I contacted the head of home distribution at SF Studios and I got confirmation of them releasing both sets. The current plan is for a late 2020 release. I specifically mentioned the extended versions in my question and while he didn't comment specifically in his reply, but I'm sure that's what we're gonna get.

I just got the same confirmation. They are releasing both The Hobbit and LOTR in the nordic region. No release date decided yet but they are planned for 2020.

[vicious_boy]

Originally Posted by hm83

I just got the same confirmation. They are releasing both The Hobbit and LOTR in the nordic region. No release date decided yet but they are planned for 2020.

I haven't gotten a reply yet, but great!

[Deathbymonkeys]

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

Bolg (Azog's son) was going to be a man in a suit until the last minute, as well. In fact, you can see him now as an orc that is tormenting Gandalf in the 3rd film's extended edition:

Galadriel saves Gandalf [full HD] - YouTube

He is actually in the battle of moria footage as well.

[Spearmint701]

Originally Posted by nusilver

That's so great to hear. Do you have any specific memories of that time that you treasure?

I edited these details out of my original post (feel free to skip for anyone who doesn't want sappy anecdotes!), but my mom, gone now for 17 years, introduced me to the books, so they've always been a way to stay connected to her and to bridge the distance between her and my son. I read The Hobbit to him starting a couple of months before he was born; it took about a year to finish. Now he's almost two and we're halfway through Fellowship of the Ring, which, since we're in quarantine mode here in the States, we mostly read either in our backyard or in the nearby park, which has a lot of gnarly, twisted, mysterious nature trails that really enhance the experience of the book.

After spending at least a decade of my life reading through the books annually, then finally discovering my Gandalf voice in 2016 while reading The Two Towers to my wife on a road trip across New Zealand... well, getting to share these books with my son has been a dream come true, and while I won't hold it against him if he doesn't like them when he's older, I sure hope they'll be as special to him as they are to me. For now, it melts my heart every time he excitedly babbles on about hobbits or "Tombadil."

The movies, of course, are all special to me too, for different reasons, but I'll just share one more anecdote, this one related to Return of the King: in 2003, seven months after we lost my mom, I got tickets to a pre-release screening of ROTK. I'd never had much of a relationship with my dad before my mom died (parents, obviously, are complicated), but he was the only person I wanted to take to the film. Anyway, when we got to the siege of Minas Tirith, and Pippin said to Gandalf "I didn't think it would end this way" and Gandalf reassured him with a stunning description of the afterlife taken directly from the FOTR book (you all know the one), my dad took my hand, squeezed it tight, and held it for the rest of the film.

All of this is why I love all six of these movies and can't wait to revisit them in 4K. Just... not the theatrical version of Battle of the Five Armies.

[Show spoiler]

Great post. Thank you for sharing.

Went to Hobbiton last December, man that was a powerful and unforgettable experience.

[vicious_boy]

I got a response from SF Studios myself today that they're releasing this too here in Norway, but that they don't have any release date for either.

[Pieter V]

Hobbit motion picture trilogy the (extended & theatrical) (4k + blu-ray)
PETER JACKSON
$129.99
Release date
2020-12-01

https://www.archambault.ca/movies/ho...02&cat=1886142

[Avageektwit]

https://www.4kfilme.de/herr-der-ring...dezember-2020/

Keeping this thread in the loop too. Very strong feeling that official announcements for the US/UK releases of both trilogies are imminent.

[vicious_boy]

Yeah, hopefully it will be soon. I'm so excited to see how they look.

[Resettito]

I was wondering if they somehow could finesse some CG shots on The Hobbit that are shaky due to time constraints.

[mastafishere]

You guys think we’ll get the HFR versions?

[Resettito]

Originally Posted by mastafishere

You guys think we’ll get the HFR versions?

Bill Hunt said not to expect it, 48 fps converted to 60 could introduce artifacts and WB might not want for customers to run into equipment incompatibility, etc.

[imsounoriginal]

Bill Hunt has said it, along with anyone who can do math.

[levcore]

Originally Posted by Resettito

I was wondering if they somehow could finesse some CG shots on The Hobbit that are shaky due to time constraints.

Literally where would they start, there is so much CG in these movies.

The FX are generally excellent considering the sheer volume of them and as you mention, the time constraints the artists were under.

[Jonathan McLeod]

Originally Posted by levcore

Literally where would they start, there is so much CG in these movies.

It depends where the shortcomings fall. Are the actual renders of the characters/orcs/etc too low resolution? Has the completed CGI been rendered in too low a resolution and then upscaled? Has the animation been too heavily compressed for some reason?

The hardest thing to fix would be if the original models are low resolution. But from my experience of how animators tend to work, this would seem unlikely - the actual models are likely many times higher res than will ever be seen in a finished product.

I suspect it is a mixture of the latter two, and re-rendering all the CGI at a higher resolution takes a very long time and will probably have been deemed unfeasible.

[Schism213]

Originally Posted by Resettito

Bill Hunt said not to expect it, 48 fps converted to 60 could introduce artifacts and WB might not want for customers to run into equipment incompatibility, etc.

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Bill Hunt has said it, along with anyone who can do math.

[levcore]

Originally Posted by Jonathan McLeod

It depends where the shortcomings fall. Are the actual renders of the characters/orcs/etc too low resolution? Has the completed CGI been rendered in too low a resolution and then upscaled? Has the animation been too heavily compressed for some reason?

The hardest thing to fix would be if the original models are low resolution. But from my experience of how animators tend to work, this would seem unlikely - the actual models are likely many times higher res than will ever be seen in a finished product.

I suspect it is a mixture of the latter two, and re-rendering all the CGI at a higher resolution takes a very long time and will probably have been deemed unfeasible.

I don't think any of the above applies to The Hobbit movies. I've never noticed any low resolution CG work in these movies.

[TheHutt]

On The Hobbit, postproduction pipeline was in 2K. Though the original files are 5K.

[Geoff D]

Which is why I'm very leery of Bill Hunt's "4K master" claims re: the Hobbitses. He's obsessed with the fact that they were shot at 5K which, in theory, gives them something to rebuild akin to going back to the camera negative for LOTR. That makes sense, except...

...so much of the Hobbitses has some kind of CG element which was finished out as a full 2K shot that unless Weta went back in and re-rendered and re-composited 6000+ VFX shots for all three movies (which would cost many, many millions of dollars) then these "4K masters" will basically be one long upscale aside from the occasional shot that had no VFX to begin with.

And yes, with there being no HFR it didn't take much to see it coming. There is no 48fps standard in the UHD Blu spec so making that fit into 50 or 60 frames is more trouble than it's worth.

[mastafishere]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Bill Hunt has said it, along with anyone who can do math.

Alright I was just asking. Personally, I’m glad because I hate that effect but I’ll admit i was curious to see how it looked.

[Schism213]

Originally Posted by mastafishere

Alright I was just asking. Personally, I’m glad because I hate that effect but I’ll admit i was curious to see how it looked.

And let that be a lesson to you!