I’m wondering what the UHD LOTR will be sourced from. While it was shot on 35mm,it was finished digitally as a 2K DI,so going back to film would mean redoing the entire post production and believe me, it would not be as simple as rerendering CGI in 4K - even if they still had all the assets and project files, which is ridiculously unlikely, CGI is rendered in layers, so the compositing would have to be redone as well - basically it would take pretty much the full cost of doing post production on a very high budget movie,so more than likely, they will go to the original 2K DIs, upscale them and give them an HDR grade.
I’ve been wondering about this myself. Since LOTR is so VFX heavy, redoing visual effects in 4K is probably out of the realm of possibility. Honestly, I just hope it’s sourced from the original 2K DI, and upscaled. No monkey business, no green tint, no DNR, no artificial sharpening, no scanning of a print — just the original file that got rendered out as the master, before it got printed back onto film. That would be the best source IMO.
Then again, Warner may be trying to capitalize off of the new Amazon series, so maybe they will release it later and do a full 4K remaster. It’s hard to say. That would be a very Peter Jackson-y thing to do.
All I want is for the film to look exactly like it looks on the EE DVD, but at the highest resolution and bitrate available.