10 Comments
author

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!)

Expand full comment

From what I've read, they will go with things that haven't been on film yet. So probably 1st age

Expand full comment
author

But see, the thing about that is that the rights to adapt The Silmarillion have not been sold by the Tolkien estate. All this news is (to my understanding) about the rights to adapt specifically The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. So you can adapt things mentioned anywhere in those works that happened in the First or Second Ages (or even earlier in the Third) but you can't draw from details in The Silmarillion. This is the exact same problem that The Rings of Power is facing: they have the TV rights for LOTR, not The Silmarillion.

Expand full comment

I am super skeptical.

Expand full comment
author

I am wary too!

Expand full comment

I’m extremely skeptical but I will say I wouldn’t be mad to see a decent adaptation of Beren and LΓΊthien or The Children of HΓΊrin.

Expand full comment

Bombadil - the epic saga of the fine art of not getting involved!! (With a hey nonny rill-o)

Expand full comment

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!

Expand full comment

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 β€” like Sara's Children of Hurin suggestion above β€” 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.

Expand full comment

With how bad ROP has been, I really am terrified of any new mainstream Tolkien themed media.

Expand full comment