Before Peter Jackson's vision of the Lord of the Rings was brought to life on the big screen, most motion picture studio executives would likely have rather cut off a finger than green-light a fantasy movie. Nearly all past movies in this genre had bombed at the box office, and been vilified by professional critics and potential fans alike. Prior to the Tolkien Trilogy, the most recent attempt to capitalize on the imaginations of nerds everywhere was the Dungeon & Dragons movie, thought to be a sure thing. But the woeful mishandling and miscasting - Marlon Wayans as the movie's thief "Snails"? - had many industry watchers speculating that a high-fantasy film might never reach the big screen again.

How do you go from a puppet movie to having Electronic Arts develop a game based on your vision of dragons and dwarves?

Given this, one wonders how Peter Jackson convinced anyone to back him with his ambitious project - especially considering his own prior stints in the director's chair. His biggest film prior to "The Fellowship" was 1996's "The Fighteners"; he had made only "B" movies prior to that, including one with a cast composed almost entirely of puppets! The granting of the Lord of the Rings license to Mr. Jackson can only be explained as providence. But given the incredible success of his films, it couldn't have taken much convincing to get the gaming world's colossus, Electronic Arts, to make a real-time strategy title based on them.

Unlike the decision made about the film's director, Electronic Arts carefully handed the project over to a very trusted internal studio (EA LA) rather than an unproven developer. Keeping it in house, where it could be carefully monitored, was the obvious choice. Let's remember that, like fantasy films themselves, games based on movie licenses have a dismal reputation too.