Whether or not it’s a strip mining operation remains to be seen.
On a Thursday earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that newly-installed studio leaders Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy have brokered a deal to make “multiple” films based on the beloved J. R. R. Tolkien books. The projects will be developed through WB label New Line Cinema. The first “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, helmed by Peter Jackson, grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide; Jackson’s follow-up trilogy based on Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” matched those grosses.
I don’t think they’re mad enough to actually remake either LotR or the Hobbit; it’s too soon, not to mention an invitation to hubris. There are, however, projects that they could be doing. The Rings of Power stuff over on Amazon is irrelevant to this conversation: Warner Bros has access to the Silmarillion itself. There’s stuff in there that cold be turned into a movie, yeah. Particularly if they have access to Tolkien’s notes, too.
Note, though: deciding that all of this is doomed to wrack and ruin is perfectly reasonable, too.
I will allow for a “reboot” consisting of three things, and three things only:
1) Exact same movies
2) Fix the character assassination of Faramir
3) Excise the Scrubbing Bubbles of the Paths of the Dead
Okay, I’ll allow a fourth:
4) Tom Bombadil
I think there are quite a few directors in Hollywood who would LOVE to get paid piles of money to make something dark.
And the Silmarillion is frelling bleak.
Not to mention, a lot of it happens before sunlight reaches Arda. Blue filters galore.
A movie titled “The Fall of Gondolin” isn’t going to have a happy ending, and nobody wants it to.
The stories are loosely connected, and don’t need to be told in order.
So you can pick the low hanging fruit first, and build an audience for the more ambitious undertakings.
The stories themselves only have a few major characters, with everyone else as background. That makes good casting affordable. You don’t need to develop characters that aren’t important to the story. I’m sure the bandit who was Black Helmet’s second in command had a backstory and personality, but nobody cares. He’s a bit player in a couple of scenes, then he leaves the story. And he may not even have a single line.
Contrawise, who wants to play Fingolfin in the gallant fight he knows he can’t win? Who wants to get there Brian Blessed on, and portray Fëanor’s journey from flawed hero, to obsessive anti-hero, to bitter anti-villain?
And there’s a metric ton of moolah in it for you if you can sell it to the fanboys.
Their.
Curse you, Otto Korrect!
It could really go either way.
As for Amazon .. I figure they’ve been infested by Critical Role, the folks behind Vox Machina .. who appear to have literally turned their tabletop gaming campaign into an animated series.
Specifically, their take on “middle earth” is very pretty .. but has the depth of a poorly run tabletop gaming campaign .. characters acting well out of their backgrounds .. GM not slapping anyone down ..
Mew
Vox Machina did a better job of characterization than Rings of Bezos. But then, they actually understood and cared about their characters, and probably would have done Lord of Amazon better than the current crop of hubristic lunatics.