Pandemic To Be The New Lord Of The Rings News

At an 'Analysts Day' held yesterday, Electronic Arts revealed in a presentation that Pandemic Studios has been given the responsibility of rejuvenating the Lord of the Rings brand, last seen in EALA's Battle for Middle-Earth II.

EA has enjoyed a mixed bag of success with the brand, based on both Tolkien's literature and New Line Cinema's phenomenally successful movie trilogy, but put on hold the open-world RPG 'The White Council' in early 2007. It's unclear whether Pandemic's task is to resurrect that title, or work on a new Lord of the Rings game entirely. Given the studio's history of wide-scale action games such as Star Wars: Battlefront and Mercenaries however, we're gunning for the latter.

The game could also be linked to stirrings from inside Hollywood, with news that New Line Cinema has tentatively green-lit a two part adaptation of The Hobbit. Hellboy/Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro is the favourite to take over Peter Jackson's reins, though he's yet to sign onto the project.

Besides Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Saboteur, Pandemic are know to be working on four additional titles, codenamed 'B', 'Q', 'Y', and 'Z'.

Additional titles in development listed in EA's Analyst Report include 'SimAnimals' (scheduled for released before April 2009), and an unannounced title by German-based EA Phenomic. The MySims series is also set for expansion between now and Spring 2009, with MySims Kingdom for Wii and Nintendo DS announced, alongside MySims Party.