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Amazon (and Netflix) Pursue a 'Lord of The Rings' TV Series (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge:
Amazon Studios has been looking for a way to duplicate HBO's success with Game of Thrones, and the company may have found a solution: adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings into a TV series. Variety reports that the company is currently in talks with Warner Bros. Television and the late author's estate, and while discussions are said to be in "very early stages," it is clearly a high priority, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos himself involved in the negotiations.
Amazon isn't the only one looking into the rights, according to Deadline, which reports that the Tolkien Estate is looking to sell the television rights to the iconic fantasy series to the tune of $200-250 million, and has approached Netflix and HBO as well. There appears to be some strings attached: the rights might not encompass all of the characters in the story. HBO has reportedly passed on the project.
"We can hear the pitch now," jokes The Verge. "It's like Game of Thrones, only with a series of books that are actually finished."
Amazon isn't the only one looking into the rights, according to Deadline, which reports that the Tolkien Estate is looking to sell the television rights to the iconic fantasy series to the tune of $200-250 million, and has approached Netflix and HBO as well. There appears to be some strings attached: the rights might not encompass all of the characters in the story. HBO has reportedly passed on the project.
"We can hear the pitch now," jokes The Verge. "It's like Game of Thrones, only with a series of books that are actually finished."
So, no Tom Bombadil? Again?
To take a cherished series that already has a complete movie adaption? Either we're watching the events unfold with un-filmed scenes from the books at a slow rate... or we'll be getting non-lore spin-offs in middle earth.
Both sound awful.
I don't read AC
Anyone who's comparing LOtR to GoT clearly doesn't understand anything about Tolkien and why he was writing his stories. ...and if you mess with something you don't understand, you will wreck it. Badly.
At the end of the new Lord of the Rings TV series, the hobbits must come up against a danger worse than Sauron.
They must face off against the ghost of JRR Tolkien, whom they end up flogging to death.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I worry I'll never see it as I imagine it. If only I were a director!
This sig intentionally left blank.
Just Slice the three movies and the extra footage in a slightly different way, and ther eyou have it.
If Amazon (or any other party), wants better material for a TV series, get the rights on "The Silmarillion"...
Plenty of material, for many, many seasons, plenty of latitude for variation from book to TV (as it was not nearly concluded as is), more sex (including incest, like Game of Thrones), and no pesky comparision to the movies (with it's big budget actors and big budget FX)...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
HBO has Game of Thrones? Alright.
Unless all you're planning to do is steal their audience, it won't happen. Stop pandering the same audience over and over again. You need something different to grab the people who still don't have Netflix/Amazon Video/HBO Now/etc or who will subscribe to a second or third streaming service.
Right now, there is a serious lack of real/good science-fiction series. The 100 is good but while it started out as science-fiction, it sort of derailed into a game of thrones clone. What next? A planet of the apes tv show reboot?
If you don't want to take risks there's plenty of good, well-known science-fiction titles that could probably make a good tv show: Terminator (pick it up where The Sarah Connor Chronicles dropped the ball, it seems the show got cancelled just as it was beginning to be interesting), Predator (not purely science-fiction, but hey, it's a known title), Aliens (plenty of spaceships and colonies to be infested), etc.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see a reboot of Knight Rider done with a Google Maps car, a Tesla or something.
Hell, talk to Valve and get the rights to make a TV show from Half-Life/Portal. GlaDOS is the perfect vilain you kinda root for, in secret. She's like a Bond vilain from the old movies.
What about a comedy spy tv show? Make a show with the worst spies possible, something similar to Johnny English or Frank Drebin.
ANYTHING except another fucking show with kings, swords and shitty politics and shit like that.
#DeleteFacebook
Really? J.K. Rowling over Tolkien?? Are we talking about the same Rowling who just invents things out of thin air every time she needs a plot device? The same author who invoked time travel in one single plot line but for some reason time travel was never used in any story before or after? I'm sorry, but as a fantasy author, Rowling is awful. I'll give you that Tolkien isn't known for "deep characterization", however I believe his plot lines are far more interesting and logical than Rowling's. Stephen King has incredibly "deep characterization" in The Stand, but that book totally falls apart, invoking deus ex machina in the end because he couldn't resolve the story even after killing off half the main characters. It's purely a matter of personal preference, but I prefer Tolkien's heavy-handed, consistent style of writing that is logical and historic in nature over Tolkien or even King's fantasy works.
Better known as 318230.
or a series around Drizzt
There are so many beloved fantasy epics out there, it might be wise to avoid the almost-blasphemy of redoing LoTR.
Off the top of my head, I'd do Wheel of Time. Lacking that, then I'd buy the rights to the Stormlight Archive.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If you want to make a very good Tolkien based TV series, don't re-hash The Lord of the Rings or even The Hobbit.
Use the Silmarillion.
It won't happen as long as Christopher Tolkien is alive, but once the controlling rights to the book are out of his hands it could be done.
Lots of stories there, The Oath of Feanor, The Fall of Morgoth, Beren and Luthien, & The Rise and Fall of Gondolin to name a few. Lots of brand new characters, except for Galadriel but she does not do much. "Main Characters" die left and right. Still, lots of room to do your own thing. The book spans thousands of years and several Ages, but the series could just focus on the very end of the Age of Bliss to the end of the First Age. Competent writers could get at least 5-7 season out of it with plenty of action. Lots of terrible stuff going on then. 6 Great Battles, plus lots of minor skirmishes. Wurms, Dragons, Balrogs, etc.
Well it's not your work and you don't get to decide what happens to it. Tolkien's estate gets to decide how much garbage rehashing of these stories get to be done in order to make a quick buck.
If you don't like it, vote with your dollars and stick to the novels. Preferably used copies so you can short his heirs from even that tiny amount of profit.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I find it to be pretty awful, really. Tolkien just prattles on and on and on and on about a bunch of hyperbolic shit. Every location and creature is described in extreme detail only to be outdone by the next that's more fantastical, more evil, more ancient, a taller mountain inside a deeper pit, etc.. And here's a fucking song for no reason. And Hobbit food? It's like the scene in Forest Gump describing different types of shrimp, but it's not funny, nor is it interesting. It's just filler.
Some nerds call this shit "world building". I call it Tolkien loving the smell of his own farts.
As I type this the above post is rated "Troll". That seems remarkably appropriate.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I really enjoy shows about genealogy.
*blink* but D&D novels were in libraries in 80s. I know my high school library and local public libraries carried them, alongside Eddings, Prachett, and so on. Maybe in the 50s it was the case, but high fantasy novels were rather prevalent from early 80s onwards (at least that I saw).
You are entirely right on D&D lifting from Tolkein (and other places)...their halflings were just (legally forced/threatened) renames of hobbits IIRC. And there are definitely people who love remakes...just ask the market for "Sports Game! {current year}". Or "This interpretation of classical pierce by so-and-so, as preformed by this-orchestra". To each their own.
I find it to be pretty awful, really. Tolkien just prattles on and on and on and on about a bunch of hyperbolic shit. Every location and creature is described in extreme detail only to be outdone by the next that's more fantastical, more evil, more ancient, a taller mountain inside a deeper pit, etc.. And here's a fucking song for no reason. And Hobbit food? It's like the scene in Forest Gump describing different types of shrimp, but it's not funny, nor is it interesting. It's just filler.
Some nerds call this shit "world building". I call it Tolkien loving the smell of his own farts.
It's not that Tolkien is a particularly interesting or gifted writer for the average reader that makes him such a draw. (let's face it, he's actually a little boring- although, I know millions will disagree with me). What makes Tolkien amazing and his works a landmark piece is that he pretty much created a very rich and dramatic genre and alternate universe all by himself. Sure, he took a lot from mythology, but he created a very vivid world different from others before him. Almost every fantasy author who has come along after Tolkien has stolen a little bit of Tolkien (or a lot of Tolkien) in creating their worlds. Most fantasy worlds ARE a rip-off of Tolkien in one way or another.
Tolkien's strength is not in his wordsmanship, it's in his creativity.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The Eagles weren't really an important part of the plot- the hobbits destroyed the ring. Saving their lives with deux machina was just window dressing or perhaps even meant to allegorical...
love is just extroverted narcissism
Precisely. If we could just turning Aragon into someone full of doubt, and an elvish army turning up at Helms Deep, and the whole "wobbly" column crap in Moria. where the biggest WTF moments in the movies IMHO. Heck the flight from the Shire is utterly incomprehensible unless you watch the extended edition, which gets better but is still far from anything near the books.
All you need to do is start with the BBC radio script and put it on the screen. Would be thousand times better than the movies.