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Amazon Is Making a 'Lord of the Rings' Prequel Series (techcrunch.com)
Amazon is making a Lord of the Rings prequel TV series for its Amazon Instant streaming service. The show, which already carries a multi-season commitment, will "explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring." TechCrunch reports: It's possible the new series will mine the ponderous but rich Silmarillion for material, as fan fiction writers and lore aficionados have done for decades. The exploits of the Elf-Lords of old would make for a stirring epic, while many would thrill at the possibility of seeing Moria at the height of its grandeur. So much depends on the quality of the adaptation, though. Amazon has been pretty good about its Originals, but this will be an undertaking far beyond the scope of anything its studios and partners have yet attempted. Amazon is partnering with New Line Cinema, which of course was the film company behind the much-loved trilogy that began in 2001, and the Tolkien Estate, as well as HarperCollins for some reason. The deal also "includes a potential additional spin-off series," presumably if it's popular enough.
And I hope Peter will be involved somehow..
do not want!
Did anyone even go see The Hobbit? After LotR I and many other people were pretty much burned out on the whole thing. Does anyone even actually GAF about this?
you mean The Hobbit?
If I recall,they filmed the Hobbit at an unusually high framerate. At last, their genius becomes apparent. Simply play back the Hobbit films at a far lower framerate, and hey presto - a 250 hour Netflix series, ready for release!
Personally, I loved reading it - but I'm not sure there's a huge television market of people wanting to watch stories where everyone eventually gets killed by the bad guys.
In comparison to The Silmarillion, the Game of Thrones is a feel-good epic.
#DeleteChrome
There are just to many too many streaming platforms out there. Much less a lot of HBO like ones that have shows on them I don't want to have to buy / deal with 4-5 different stores / ui's / apps / offline rules.
HBO
amazon prime
youtube red
CBS All Access
netflix
etc
defy physics in a cartoon. At least it was all in the name of humor. I naively went to the Peter Jackson movies hoping to see my favorite fantasy novel brought to life and instead saw my favorite Warner Bros cartoons translated into CGI Middle Earth action scenes.
HarperCollins has the print publishing rights to Tolkein's work, so if there are any books to come out of this....
Get Blind Guardian to make the soundtrack!!
Otherwise, pass. Not interested in another Hollywood knockoff.
Someone call PETA itâ(TM)s animal abuse to milk this poor cow so many times.
Never mind...
The closer they stay to Tolkien the better. . .
Anything less than production values equal to the movies won't do well.
Aside from that, it'll depend on the writing. A TV adaptation of the tale of Lúthien and Beren could be very cool. Tolkien wrote the bare outline in the Silmarillion, but no dialog and not a whole lot of detail. It's a love story, so Hollywood can just use it, rather than shoehorning in a bullshit love story of their own (thanks for nothing, Hobbit). It also fits well in the current zeitgeist, since Lúthien does a lot of the heavy lifting, again without any shoehorning of bullshit.
Now as another poster has pointed out, it's a tragedy. Everybody dies. More than once, in Beren's case. (Yay for divine intervention.) That plays well in Asian markets, but not so well in the West. There is a happily-ever-after for the pair though, so good enough.
Done well, it could work. Done badly, it could look and feel like MTV's travesty of an adaptation of the Elfstones of Shannara. We can expect Netflix to do a better job than MTV. How much better remains to be seen.
Don't knock it, Bored of the Rings was hilarious... although it was a better read in the late 70's than it would be now; it really didn't age well.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
And I hope Peter will be involved somehow..
who didn't read the books.
all our childhood memories.
And i always thought the name of the prequel to the Lord of the Rings was: The Hobbit.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
That would explain (to some) why Elrond is such an asshole (especially when it comes to Man).
good grief. we need another one of these like we need another star warz. jesus save us from mediocrity.
Animation. Expensive, high-quality animation for many many hours.
I agree with this.... [a shadow seems to pass over sconeu's face]. I would say more, but a shadow seems to have passed over my face.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
https://youtu.be/t6AHCK3if-I
I only watched the first five minutes but that's enough.
Let's endlessly milk the "Tolkien Franchise" until nobody gives a damn about his fantasy world.
Just like Star Wars.
This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed. That LotR and The Hobbit were exceptions because JRRT sold the rights while he was still alive, but no more under any circumstances. This is why Jackson had The Hobbit and some material from the appendices at the end of Return of the King (if you haven't read them, you should -- there are stories in there) instead of filming "The Quest of Erebor", the larger, more serious version of The Hobbit that was supposed to align more completely with LotR, which JRRT hadn't finished prior to his death. QoE is told from Frodo's perspective, as he receives the tale from Gandalf.
So why, after all these years of feeding off his father's works, and hamstringing further attempts at filming his father's works, does Christopher suddenly give the ok to film other stories, to his old nemesis New Line, of all people?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The Hobbit should have never been 3 2 hour movies. Especially as LoTR was 3 2 hour moves.
That said, if Netflix can bring interesting stories to the canon, who the hell cares? Good stories are good, bad stories are bad.
Another property I have enjoyed my whole life ruined by a greedy corporation headed by a CEO with a tiny pee pee in the name of $$$. Thanks, Jeff, thanks a lot.
Not while Christopher Tolkien is alive.
Owns one of the rings!
Surely The Hobbit was the prequel to Lord of the Rings...
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
+1
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??? Elrond is the friendliest of the Eldar to man by a long shot (especially being half one himself