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True, there are cuts made against the directors will and **** happens.
But when Jackson filmed LOTR he didn't know that the "wait for DVD" option would be available to him. And this is why the first movie is pretty good in its theatrical form.
So, for Return of the King either he did not produce sufficient film that a good movie could be edited out of it at 3+ hours instead of 4+, or he was either too focused on the DVD version to do so, or didn't want to cut a theatrical version that would differ substantially from the DVD version.
All issues that I place at his feet and not the studio's. After all even the theatrical version of Return of the King was still 3 hours, 20 minutes long (about the same as the Extended version of Two Towers) so it isn't like New Line had him horribly constrained.
And still, the general guidelines for acceptable theatrical length are well known by movie makers. If you can't write a TV series that fits into 60 minutes per episode then you don't write a TV series. If you can't make your ideal movie within the length generally accepted then you fine another venue.
Just my opinion, of course. Though Jackson really should have been doing his publicity tour for the last two movies saying "The theatrical version will be awful because the studios won't let me do 5 hours on the big screen. Wait for DVD."
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