Late Halloween watch: A Lord of the Rings TV series?

I am not quite yet at DO NOT WANT. My wife is. I think that it would work, if you did it up as the Second Age with the forging of the Rings of Power. But that’s probably not what we’d be getting.

Warner Bros. Television and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien are in talks with Amazon Studios to develop a series based on the late author’s “The Lord of the Rings” novels. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is said by sources with knowledge of the situation to be personally involved in the negotiations, which are still in very early stages. No deal has been set.

Other stories say that Netflix is still talking about getting in on this, and that the price tag for the rights could go up to 250 million bucks.  One article in particular asks: just who has the rights to a TV series, anyway? “One thing that *is* clear is that J.R.R. Tolkien sold the rights to produce a television series along with the movie rights back in 1969, so those rights are no longer owned by The Tolkien Estate (i.e., Tolkien’s heirs). That makes it interesting that the Variety article, which hasn’t been updated as of this writing, would say the ‘estate of J.R.R. Tolkien’ is in talks in tandem with Warner Bros..”

Although that might be bad information. It’s pretty clear that this would be an expensive television show, to say the least.  Maybe a bit too expensive? Keep watching the skies, true believers…

6 thoughts on “Late Halloween watch: A Lord of the Rings TV series?”

  1. How is there any cultural space for *another* retelling of the same story? Jackson only had to compete with the entertaining yet still half-@ssed animated features, none of which soared to such ubiquitous heights. I hope the inclusion of the Estate means more of the 1st, 2nd, and early 3rd Age material. There’s a lot there to mine.

  2. I came up with an idea once of how they could make one more Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movie while still being true to Tolkien’s writings. The concept was that it would pick up where Hobbit 3 left off, more or less, and follow the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain culminating with the Battle for the Lonely Mountain that was going on in parallel with the War of the Ring down in Rohan and Gondor. It would include Balin’s retaking and subsequent loss of Moria, so there would be plenty enough battle scenes.
    Oh, and Firefox? You can take the little red squiggle line you put under ‘dwarves’ and shove it up your fourth point of contact. That IS the proper spelling, dammit, Tolkien won that battle with his publishing editor over sixty years ago when the editor (who had changed elves to elfs and dwarves to dwarfs) claimed he’d consulted the Oxford English Dictionary and Tolkien responded that he had helped WRITE the Oxford English Dictionary.

  3. Well, it can’t be worse than Jackson’s travesties.
    .
    So long as it has Tom Bombadil, I’ll give it a go.

    1. Eh, Jackson made some questionable decisions, but that one was fairly minor. *Tolkein* couldn’t even say why he put Bombadil in the story.

      1. Because he was necessary.
        .
        Without Tom, you start making decisions like having Sauroman defeating the party at the pass, rather than the dark heart of Caradhras itself.
        Or Sauroman antagonizing the Ents.
        Or purging all the stories, songs, poems, and references of the wider world and its history.
        Or having Elrond Half-Elven, son of Eärendil bitterly hating men.
        All this even before you even reach the breaking of the fellowship.
        (Afterwards, you might sink so low as dwarf tossing, shield surfing, or using catapults to throw your city walls at a beseiging foe.)
        .
        If LotR took place in a vacuum, it would be shallow and forgettable. For all its epic scope, it is not the only thing going on in the setting, nor has the past been building to this pivotal climax (unless you count a diminishing echo as building).

Comments are closed.