The Lord of the Rings, an Amazon joint

I guess that they decided the only thing they could get to top Game of Thrones was Tolkien.

Wait … what? Why?!? Obviously money, but … WHY???

I dunno…why do they keep re-telling the Spider-Man origin story?

Game of Thrones has a lot of gratuitous violence and tits and ass. It would be a dishonor to Tolkien to try and appeal to that. I mean sure, a great series doesn’t have to have that, but I can’t be the only one that thinks GoT is getting a bit tame from how it started and gained popularity.

They can always surprise us but these things have a habit of turning into a CW show.

So I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s not too farfetched.

Apparently, this effort will have the backing of the Tolkien Estate (for better or worse). We all know how much Christopher Tolkien disliked the movies. So we could see a more “faithful” adaptation.

In the “yes, we’re all very old” department, you do realize that the original trilogy starting filming 20 years ago, right? There are entire generations of kids who now view them as “old movies.”

On the other hand, we’re nerds. And we know what nerds will do. We’ll watch. That’s what nerds do.

Remember, a couple months ago, Bezos lit a fire under Amazon TV. He wasn’t happy they weren’t generating big hits. He wants a Game of Thrones-sized, must-watch TV show. In general, he wants them swinging more for the fences. So it’s little surprise that apparently Bezos is heavily involved in these negotiations (it also helps that the Amazon TV chief resigned in the wake of #MeToo).

I dunno. I’ve still never seen The Hobbit #2 and #3 after seeing the bottomlessly, endlessly embarrassing first movie. I have seen clips, though, and I’m pretty sure I made the right call.

If they’re willing to take the time and effort to take the source material and history of Middle Earth seriously, get the tone right, etc, yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll probably watch it over and over, frankly. If they’re just going to make another action-adventure version (with a much smaller budget), then there’s truly no point, and no, I won’t watch that

Have you read Christopher Tolkien’s introductions to many newly published works of J.R.R. Tolkien? He reads like a Edwardian anthropology professor. His word style and syntax seem almost contemporary with the elder Tolkien from the 20s or 30s.

I’d love to see an “authentic” Tolkien estate version of Lord of the Rings, but I imagine it would end up smelling of old library dust and be far more English and Scandinavian than we might now like.

I only watched the end sequence of Hobbit 3. Couldn’t really get any worse. I knew Hobbit 1 was going to be terrible when I saw a behind the scenes of its production pre-release. All those straight out of film school kids sleeping on top of each other on location for weeks on end, being given freedom to do whatever they wanted with the monster sequences, the whole thing being just a CGI farm without any directorial input.

The same here - The first Hobbit movie was horrible, and I am a HUGE tolkien and fantasy fan, but man - that was bad, so I never watched Hobbit 2 and 3.

From listening to people fight over the lore in Shadow of Mordor, it seems like it would be cool to do a prequel, like stories out of (or based on) The Silmarillion. At least then it wouldn’t feel like the 47th reboot of spider man.

I’m intrigued by this. If it’s terrible, so what? If it’s great, well that’s awesome!

I could see this, if they can get the Tolkien estate on board. I’d love to see a well-done series that includes stories like Beren and Lúthien, and the tragedy of Túrin. Though it would take some creative writing and production to get some of those stories told since they take place across centuries and multiple generations.

I think this is great news, to be honest. Not because I want a remake of the stuff that’s already been adapted (although I’d prefer a more faithful adaptation especially after Jackson went full-Lucas indulgent post Two Towers) – but because it’s the only real viable option to bring to the screen enjoyable adaptations of the stories in the Silmarillion and Lost Tales. That seems to be the intention, based upon the article.

Is this a readaptation, or merely a series set in Middle Earth?

I don’t think it’s anything yet. We’re still in the pre-pre-production conceptual stage.

That’s my point; everyone seems to be assuming it’s just FotR, TTT, and RotK, but I’ve read that the package doesn’t necessarily include all characters. So I think the general idea is series set in the world, not another pass at the books.

More details. Apparently, the estate wants $200-250 million just for the rights alone. A TV show would have a budget of $100-$150 million per season. Not all characters would be included in the license.

HBO balked out due to the costs, which is saying something cause they’re happy to spend on GOT. Then again, they didn’t have to pay a quarter-billion for the rights.

I hope it’s something we have not seen before. I love the whole setting, but I would not be excited about another version of Frodo or Bilbo’s journeys.

You don’t fix Bilbos story by making it into a whole series. The whole core flaw with the second set of movies was turning a single book into a massive trilogy with tons of extra crap.

Redoing the original would be dumb too as those movies are awesome and it would be constantly compared to those. I’d like to see a series in the world but it’s own thing. Though not sure if it would be worth it at the price the estate is asking for.

I love Tolkien but a lot of his work and themes are riffs on creaky half remembered dark-age mythologies, outside of his core material. The stuff about Numenor is almost painfully derivative. Sometimes though he stops being a philologist and becomes a great writer.

His stuff with Hobbits is one moment - even if they were just off the top of his head and not grounded in any kind of deep mythology, Hobbits as these genial rustic half-sized English civilized country folk is now a timeless invention. My favorite scene in the Silmarillion is one that reminds of a lot of C.S. Lewis. Earendill reaches “heaven” on a mission to appeal to the demigods to save the world, and finds it empty. That was probably the finest moment in the book. Well, and maybe the implication that god bent the world into a sphere from a flat surface to cut off the Havens from the rest of the world. That was an awesome bit of Imagineering.

Isn’t there a cartoon about the Hobbit that’s pretty good? It’s been many years since I watched it though, so maybe it’s not as good as I was picturing.

Also, you guys are only partially right. The first movie makes Bilbo’s journey way more interesting than in the book. The emotional core of the dwarf leader’s temptation made that movie so much more interesting than in the book. But I agree the next two movies add way too much extra stuff.