You may never be able to try lembas -- a fictional bread that Frodo subsisted on through part of his journey to Mordor in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy -- but Denny's thinks it might have the next best thing. The company is about to roll out a Middle-Earth-inspired menu as part of a tie-in with "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey."
Along with the menu, the chain is launching a marketing campaign around one of its biggest-ever movie tie-ins.
The campaign will include a TV spot that will begin airing Nov. 12, ahead of the movie's Dec. 14 release date. Hobbit-inspired menu items will be available beginning Nov. 6 and are expected to be offered through early January. It began with a teaser campaign of unbranded billboards in the Los Angeles area and online banner ads written in a fiction script created by author J.R.R. Tolkien, that said "Middle Earth is coming to America's diner." Starting Wednesday, those will be changed out for branded ads in English with the same message.