What does this mean exactly? Are they remaking The Lord of the Rings? (probably not). Are they adapting some of the material from the appendices like Amazon is doing for The Rings of Power? Something completely different? Time will tell, but my initial reaction is to be a little wary. Do we need more The Lord of the Rings movies right now? Could we expect that a Hollywood studio can improve on the Peter Jackson trilogy?
But I said it with The Rings of Power and I’ll say it about this too: ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see the actual movies themselves to judge it. Doesn’t stop us from having some fun speculating though, right?
What say you? Are you excited by this news? Worried? Something else? And what would you like to see from these movies?
My initial take: I'm not excited. That could change! Because you either remake LOTR and use the amazing source material but have to compete with the (flawed but still amazing) Peter Jackson films and risk changing too much for what you think a moviegoing audience wants to see or you adapt portions of things either hinted at or briefly described in the Appendices. All bets are off in that latter case as to the quality there because you don't really have all that much that's "Tolkien" to draw from.
So I'm torn. Because I love Middle-earth and would love to see more of it on screen...but am not sensing that having the movie rights to LOTR is the best way to do that. (The Silmarillion, on the other hand!)
I'm 100% with you. Why not re-release the original trilogy with a remaster or something? If it's money they're worried about (lol, is water wet at WB?), it'd be so much more cost effective than any new production and bring in hundreds of millions without much work on their part. I would love to watch them again on the big screen - there's a cinema in London that does marathons of the extended versions and they're always sold out for a reason!
I agree with the general sentiment and am not convinced that today's Hollywood can do Tolkien any justice. Especially when they are expected to color in the lines he drew by adding new plot lines/characters.
The only way I can imagine any success is to take a very complete story that we don't yet have on screen — like Sara's Children of Hurin suggestion above — and adapt it.
But as they likely don't have the rights and would probably still inject too much modernity in it, I am not looking forward to the result.
My initial take: I'm not excited. That could change! Because you either remake LOTR and use the amazing source material but have to compete with the (flawed but still amazing) Peter Jackson films and risk changing too much for what you think a moviegoing audience wants to see or you adapt portions of things either hinted at or briefly described in the Appendices. All bets are off in that latter case as to the quality there because you don't really have all that much that's "Tolkien" to draw from.
So I'm torn. Because I love Middle-earth and would love to see more of it on screen...but am not sensing that having the movie rights to LOTR is the best way to do that. (The Silmarillion, on the other hand!)
I am super skeptical.
I’m extremely skeptical but I will say I wouldn’t be mad to see a decent adaptation of Beren and Lúthien or The Children of Húrin.
Bombadil - the epic saga of the fine art of not getting involved!! (With a hey nonny rill-o)
I'm 100% with you. Why not re-release the original trilogy with a remaster or something? If it's money they're worried about (lol, is water wet at WB?), it'd be so much more cost effective than any new production and bring in hundreds of millions without much work on their part. I would love to watch them again on the big screen - there's a cinema in London that does marathons of the extended versions and they're always sold out for a reason!
I agree with the general sentiment and am not convinced that today's Hollywood can do Tolkien any justice. Especially when they are expected to color in the lines he drew by adding new plot lines/characters.
The only way I can imagine any success is to take a very complete story that we don't yet have on screen — like Sara's Children of Hurin suggestion above — and adapt it.
But as they likely don't have the rights and would probably still inject too much modernity in it, I am not looking forward to the result.
With how bad ROP has been, I really am terrified of any new mainstream Tolkien themed media.