What I found kind of shocking on a second thought was that I wasn't that shocked at all reading about the game-plan. So that's how cynical I have become? Thank's for reminding me about it.
But to make the cynical point, basically everything involving the movies has been bussiness eg. a question of making (fast) money. And to be sure: without a chance of there being money to be made there wouldn't have been the movies in the first place.
I mean beginning from the idiotic surfing with the shield or mumakil's trump to casting teengirl phantasies or making "big-audience-friendly" changes in the plot to all the other merchandise; action figures, swords, costumes, board-, card- and videogames, wrapping the new print-editions of the trilogy to movie-pic covers etc... That's were the money comes - where there's muck, there's brass...
