There are a few lotr in developement and a few mods released.
The last days of the third age-best released middleearth mod so far-for old M&B 1.011
The Hornburg-released lotr mod for WB MP. Not bad.
Forodren Auth-unreleased,but my personal favorite.
The Veiled Stars (in my sig) is currently in development. there are 3 separate modules for it (each a different species or race. men, orcs of mordor, and uruk-hai. There's no release date, but we know the men of the west module will come out in the next few months.
There isn't one for Warband, but there's The Last Days for the original Mount & Blade. That mod is amazing enough to be reason enough to get the old game.
How i see it, there are 2 promising mods, but both of them unreleased., hmm - i'm hoping they will be release as soon as possible, because Warband is amazing game, and if there are LOTR elements ( i'm huuuge fan of Tolkien ), that would be just MAGNIFICENT
Yeah, and I hope Veiled Stars will be released soon. As for other unreleased mod, I'll check it tomorrow. I'll consider buying vanilla and trying The Last Days. I caught a let's play on youtube, so I'll give it a look