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LOTR to Become a London Musical

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can't-wait-for-gollum's-solo dept.

PenguinRadio writes "Sky is reporting that Lord of the Rings will become 'the most expensive musical ever seen in London', sporting a price tag of 8 million pounds and a running time of nearly 3 and 1/2 hours."

3 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. OOohhh... give it a rest... by Davak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How long before people start having a backlash against LOTRs?

    4000 recent awards, the actors are plastered on every talk show, multiple console games, 3 recent highly pushed movies --shouldn't they just take a breather?

    Wouldn't waiting a few years and then bringing the story back in a different format be refreshing for the story?

    Davak

  2. Pushing it... by gloth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Adapting LotR to anything is a bold undertaking. Peter Jackson took the enormous risk to turn it into a movie trilogy, and succeeded, IMO, in the sense that apparently most avoid Tolkien fans seem to approve of his work, even though there are concerns about "streamlining" or "cutting corners" here and there. And I think Jackson deserves an enormous amount of credit for this.

    Now, 10 hours of movies are yet quite different from 3 hours of musical. To bring this to the stage in a successful manner, a lot of streamlining and cutting will have to be done, with a tremendous risk of falling short of the original. I will admit that I was sceptical about the movies, and Jackson proved me wrong. I am even more sceptical here.

    There are times where it's wise not to tempt fate, and pass on some challenges, instead of taking your shot at it and fail. Come up with your own original story and knockyourself out, no problem. But taint the work of Tolkien with a failed attempt of an adaptation, and people will remember you for a long time...

  3. Re:Ruined. by dswensen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I once read an interview with comic book author Alan Moore in which the interviewer asked him how he felt about his comics being "ruined" by dismal, piece-of-crap movie adaptations (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the like).

    He responded. "Ruined my books? No, they're fine, they're right over there on the shelf."

    I feel the same way about this. Certainly it has every chance of being a dismal, laughable production, but the original source material has survived worse lambasting already at the hands of the Harvard Lampoon and a thousand poor imitators writing ten-book doorstop epics in homage to Tolkien. The original LOTR material is going to be just fine.