The best part of this announcement is this here.
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To me, this means that they are working with Christopher and we will see something, likely from the Silmarillion notes (published or unpublished) that happens in the 60 years between Hobbit and Fellowship.
They will have to keep it between the two in order to bring in a wider audience.
Going back to the 1st or 2nd age stories will lose a lot of people and they could just do something without the LoTR IP attached.