BEVERLY HILLS, California — As you read this, "A Christmas Carol" is playing at a theater near you in 3-D, and "Avatar" is getting ready to open soon in the same format. Recent hit releases in three dimensions have included everything from "Up" and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

'It would take two to three years to do,' he says of preparing the films for possible re-release.

Meatballs" to "My Bloody Valentine" and the Jonas Brothers concert documentary.

It would seem like a no-brainer, then, to green-light a re-release of the most critically and commercially popular movie trilogy of all time, wouldn't it? Um, not so fast.

"Nothing has changed, really," sighed Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson when we caught up with him recently, discussing a 3-D re-release of his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy that would undoubtedly thrill its millions of fans. Back in July, Jackson and fellow visionary James Cameron spoke about how Hollywood should use moviegoers' love of newfangled, high-quality 3-D to revisit its greatest blockbusters. But while Cameron is in the process of preparing "Titanic" for a re-release, and George Lucas is doing the same with the "Star Wars" movies, the epic adventures of Middle-earth are stuck in a head-scratching funk.

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