If you thought there's been quite a lot of The Lord of the Rings about the place since the first film's release, just you wait. At the end of this year not only will be there be the second film, The Two Towers, and the special edition extra-footage DVD of the first, The Fellowship of the Ring, there will also be the first of what is planned to be three videogames, all sticking closely to Peter Jackson's Middle-earth. Or so says Neil Young (yes, he gets the occasional request for Like a Hurricane), executive in charge of production at American game giant Electronic Arts, who spoke to TimeOut during his first visit to the LOTR post-production in Wellington.
"For example, when you are going over the bridge of Khazad-dum you will not be going over some interpretation of the bridge of Khazad-dum, you will literally be going over that same geometry that was used to create the film, and you will be controlling a character that is not some interpretation of a character, but is the digital double stand-in that was used in the feature film."
The first game, destined for PlayStation2, will be entitled The Two Towers, an action-based title which will also feature parts of the first movie and action heroes Legolas, Gimli or Aragorn (pictured). The second game out in 2003 will be Return of the King, more of an action-adventure and featuring hobbits Frodo and Sam as well as Gollum. Finally in 2005 will be Trilogy, an epic story adventure with multiple characters.
And in the game world, the LOTR titles are likely to be as big as the films are in the movie world, which means Young is expecting the titles to do $US500 million worth of business. Much of the work on the 30-month simultaneous development of the three games will be done in San Francisco, but EA will be sending people to Wellington to work with the film-makers - and to get Jackson's input.
"Peter has a crisp understanding of what it takes to make a good game and I'm not sure if there have been any other film-makers who have the same foresight and vision that he has. And he's a gamer, so we're fortunate that he is making the films."