No doubt taking a page from George Lucas' playbook of how to release multiple versions of the same movies, the official web site for the Lord of the Rings movies (click the read link) is announcing that limited editions of the three movies will be available on August 29th. From the site:

These Limited Editions feature both the theatrical and extended versions of the film plus an all-new documentary. But they won't be around forever - own all three on August 29th! Disc One Includes both the Theatrical version and the Extended version of the film. You can choose which version to watch! Disc Two Features a new feature-length documentary with never-before-seen "making of" footage. Filmmaker Costa Botes, who was personally selected by Peter Jackson, took a unique approach to telling the story of the cast and crew experience on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. By letting the raw footage speak for itself, the result is a fascinating telling of the challenges, training, and camaraderie that resulted in the greatest adventure on film.

This smacks of re-releasing titles for the sake of reselling the same stuff to the same people. I admired how they handled the theatrical and extended editions of the movies when they were originally released, as the extended editions did not overlap with the original releases. With these titles, it appears that the only thing that is new is the documentary. So the target markets for these releases are die-hard collectors who have to have everything released and people who haven't already bought either edition, but would like to? How many of those can there possibly be? I have both the theatrical and extended editions, and I have no plan to pick these up unless there are some compelling details that are missing from this announcement.