Update: Amazon Studios has officially acquired global TV rights to the Lord of the Rings franchise. The multi-season epic fantasy TV series will be produced at Amazon Studios with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, publisher HarperCollins, and New Line Cinema. Click through for more information, including potential new storylines to be explored in this series.
According to a press release on November 13, 2017, the Amazon Prime Original series will explore “new storylines preceding” The Fellowship of the Ring:
“The Lord of the Rings is a cultural phenomenon that has captured the imagination of generations of fans through literature and the big screen,” said Sharon Tal Yguado, Head of Scripted Series, Amazon Studios. “We are honored to be working with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, HarperCollins and New Line on this exciting collaboration for television and are thrilled to be taking The Lord of the Rings fans on a new epic journey in Middle Earth.”
“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”
Set in Middle Earth, the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s TheFellowship of the Ring. The deal includes a potential additional spin-off series.
It is unclear if the Amazon series will be solely a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if it will pull any familiar characters from that series, or if it will also retread the same ground as the movie trilogy. Hopefully Amazon will provide updates about the status of the project as development continues.
The original article, below:
According to Variety, Warner Bros. Television and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien are developing a television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with Amazon Studios reportedly in early talks to air the epic fantasy series.
Sources say that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is personally involved in the negotiations, which is unusual for him, but makes sense based on the programming shift that Bezos ordered earlier this year: moving away from “niche, naturalistic series” such as Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle toward “large-scale genre programming”—that is, toward a Game of Thrones successor.
We don’t know much else for the moment, though TheOneRing.net has provided a history of the transfer of movie, television, and other rights from the Tolkien estate to various production companies and studios. They also cite Deadline’s report, which says that Netflix and HBO were also approached about the deal but that the latter dropped out, while the former is still potentially in the running.
“Plus,” Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva notes, “I hear that the rights for a TV series in the Lord of the Rings do not encompass all characters and are limited.”
And, lest we forget, there are already three movies adapted from the original trilogy, and three more from The Hobbit. Would you want to see The Lord of the Rings as an epic fantasy TV series?
Please, Silmarillion and Beren & Luthien!
I’m struggling to see this. While I’m not sure the Jackson films have aged as well as I would have expected, at least they provided an idiosyncratic, original take on the material, for both better and worse. Unless I hear about a visionary director brought on to this project, the likeliest directions I can imagine are ultra-faithful (likely to translate poorly to visual/dramatic medium) or some kind of misguided grimdark take. I was hoping Bezos would either somehow take over the WoT project or pick up the Cosmere rights for the “I want an epic fantasy” thing. (Or in a totally different direction, do October Daye if he was willing to start in urban fantasy and shift slowly towards contemporary epic.)
At this point, I’m hoping this either runs aground or gets a truly extraordinary showrunner that can make another version artistically defensible. Otherwise I think I’ll just read the novel again.
Mining the Silmarillion would be acceptable (and easier to come by for GoT style dramatics).
Otherwise, I can think of a half dozen other properties I’d rather see on screen that LOTR II: The Scouring of the Canon.
Something that’s perhaps been a little lost in this is that Amazon were the front-runners to helm the Wheel of Time TV show, so if they do go for Tolkien then Wheel of Time will almost certainly be dropped, and it’s unclear if another studio would be interested in picking up the project in the face of stiff competition from a Tolkien show.
http://thewertzone.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-impact-of-amazontolkien-deal-on.html
I’d watch Turin. I’d hoped for a movie, but a prestige TV show might work.
Back story about characters we already know? No
Non-canon stuff? No
Beren and Luthien? Meh-No
Silmarillion in general? No
I would love to see a tv adaptation of The Silmarillion before another adaptation of Lord of the Rings. That being said, there’s so much in the Silmarillion that I wonder how feasible it is to adapt it. How do you adapt a story that is essentially a history of a people that spans millenia? Like what characters do you choose to follow? If you chose to follow the Feanorians, would that mean leaving stuff like Turin on the cutting room floor?
If they are interested in genre series, I wish they would look at other epic fantasy series first. I would love a Dragonriders of Pern series or a series based on Tamora Pierce novels.
I don’t think Middle-Earth works well as an open-ended setting for new Lord of the Rings stories. I’d rather see a series that takes place in a more complex world with less of a clean good vs. evil conflict.
@4–Hadn’t heard that. Boo. LOTR is the greater work of literature but I can’t see that it needs another adaptation. WoT is crying out for a great adaptation.
Agree that I’d happily watch Children of Húrin, but there’s no way the estate will sell the rights to the First Age characters and stories after the acrimony of the merchandising lawsuit.
I understand the urge to adapt Tolkien, and the idea that an episodic format might best suit the work. However, I can’t help but think on the potential fantasy shows we won’t be getting, because of this. It’s just very… safe. And unnecessary. Not (just) because there were successful films made in the recent past, so much as really adapting what made Tolkien great is extremely difficult, maybe impossible. So much of what makes the books a remarkable experience is how he deploys language–both those he’s developed and the plain English prose. That, and so many of his beyond-hyperbole descriptions, are lost in a visual medium. What is it to look like a Sea King of old?
I’d much rather see the Silmarillion in some sort of high-quality traditional animation form – I find that there’s an epic quality to it that I think would be hard to match in live action.
As for this… There’s room to do better than the Peter Jackson films. But there’s also room to do a lot worse.
Not that I don’t love me some Tolkien, but there are so many better options out there — Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky books, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel books, Robin Hobb, P.C. Hodgell — heck, if you want to do something classic, try E.R. Eddison or maybe do a more faithful Burroughs Barsoom adaptation.
Really don’t need to see a boobs ‘n’ dongs take on LotR, thank you very much.
As I’ve been saying on my own social media accounts as well as over on the Mary Sue where I first saw this news breaking, I’m deeply ambivalent about this. I don’t feel like I need another LotR adaptation this soon.
On the other hand, it’s also been pointed out to me quite correctly that the Jackson movies will be twenty years old starting in 2021. So at least this rumbling is less “soon” than, oh, say, the turnaround time on Spiderman flicks.
And while I am deeply weary of constant reboots, the main reason I’m not dismissing this out of hand entirely is straight up due to my being a lifelong Tolkien fangirl. And I can acknowledge that there’s a lot of material in the books that a series-length treatment would have time for that was not covered in the films.
I’d really much rather see a decent series-length stab at the Fall of Numenor. And I would desperately love to see a take on Beren and Luthien, for that matter. But like many other commenters, I’m extremely dubious that we’ll see the rights to anything in The Silmarillion unlocking any time soon.
LoTR/Hobbit: Unnecessary.
Silmarillion: Impractical for reasons of scale (as cited by many previous posters, and IMO those saying it *could* be done are being overly optimistic), and much less saleable than Hobbit or LoTR.
Instead, if you want the next GoT (grimdark) why not adapt The Black Company from Cook? Already episodic, easily infused with “boobs and sorcery”…just make Soulcatcher unambiguously feminine from the get go…and has enough drama and a good mix of standard vs. evolving cast, as well as a compelling leads in Croaker and The Lady.
If Epic Fantasy, then yeah, Wheel of Time I guess (I avoided that doorstopper plague, but Shannara, which I didn’t manage to miss until late in the run, is already optioned so why NOT WoT?). It has what is clearly a vested fanbase and at least SOME forward momentum, rather than needing to justify, “Why *another* LoTR adaptation?”
I don’t like this and I don’t see the point. I can break it down in a sequence:
If you have to have a fantasy series, why not something by a woman and/or person of color?
If you have to have a story by a man, why not something recent that hasn’t been done or has been done poorly (Dresden Files, Mistborn, etc.)?
If you have to have an older story with a massive, dedicated fan base, why not Wheel of Time or the Belgariad or Thomas Covenant)?
If it has to be Tolkien, why not ANYTHING but the Lord of the Rings, which has a definitive movie version that’s less than a generation old?
I just don’t see how this is going to work. I don’t want to watch something after the Lord of the Rings. I don’t want to watch anything from the Silmarillion because I cannot see a story being done well. The Hobbit was milked for all it was worth and then some. There are so many options we haven’t seen on screen yet, why try to beat another story out of Tolkien? I’m a huge fan but this doesn’t give me a scintilla of excitement.
@14 I haven’t thought about the Belgariad for a very long time. Haven’t read those books since I was a teen but I remember the Eddings series being very entertaining and epic. Interesting thought.
Heck, I’d honestly be more interested in a (good) Dragonlance or Drizzt adaptation than in another LotR, unless they have something really clever in mind.
An epic look at the downfall of Numenor could be pretty… well, epic
Agree with a number above that The Silmarillion would be a more intriguing project. It reads more as a synopsis of early Middle Earth – broad sketches of stories Tolkien never told in detail – than as a novelization of events. I think it’s too vast a story to pack into even a six-to-seven season series and still do the source material justice. After all, the sum of events in LoTR occupy only a few pages in context of The Silmarillion. However, it might be possible to pull smaller arcs from the larger Silmarillion narrative (these ‘small’ story arcs being epic tales in their own right) and bring them to life.
Doing do would require the scriptwriters be given creative license to create the details (characters/dialogue/settings) missing from Tolkien’s high-level sketches. Given the passion of The Silmarillion’s fans, filling in those details would have to be done thoughtfully and very, very carefully. But, if done well, and with genuine respect for the source material, it would make for some amazing television.
I had the same thoughts many others had. As flawed in some respects as the Jackson movies were, they were still pretty darn good and I feel content allowing those to be ‘the’ Lord of the Rings adaptations. Why not tackle something else? As others have stated, I’d love to see an episodic Wheel of Time or Mistborn series.
If you are going to use an Eddings series, use the Elenium. I think that series can be more concise than that of the Belgariad. The concept of the young hero who is hidden has been done multiple times. In the Elenium, the main hero is an adult who is already a hero in his own right. You still have the main characters going on a journey. You just avoid the main character having to learn to become a hero.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
6, I’m too scared of how the dragons would look in either of those series, even in animated form.
16, I’ve heard even the MTG movie is dead, I wouldn’t be optimistic.
20, it could certainly work, but they’d have to keep my favorite scene with Bevier.
Do we really need another version of Lord of the Rings? Amazon should try for something new.
@11 Ooh the Kushiel books are a fabulous suggestion. Already chock full of characters and politics and intrigue, so Amazon or whoever gets their GoT boxes ticked, and sexuality is intrinsic to the culture, so they get their boobs in plot and not shoehorned into the background. I love it. Also, I plain love the books.
22,23, split the difference, do Carey’s Sundering books.
No, no, no, no and no. There are SO many other wonderful fantasy and speculative fiction novels to adapt. We don’t need another LoTR adaptation.
Agreee with all the others. I love Tolkien, and I also love Jackson’s movies. I’d (probably) be onboard with “Silmarillion”, but do not think it likely to happen, especially due to the rights issue, as has been pointed out. But LOTR? No. Just … no.
The reason I’m open at all to a possible adaptation is to provide a counterpoint to the nihilistic and bleak outlook provided by more “realistic” shows like Game of Thrones. Tolkien’s Middle Earth and its characters provide plenty of conflict without ever sliding into the pitfalls of the modern flawed protagonist and antihero. Even someone like Boromir, who succumbs to the pull of the ring, is shown to be a brave, conflicted but loyal and loving son and captain. There’s a certain innocence to these works that current televison sorely lacks.
I’m betting they’re going to try to tell the story of Aragorn in his younger days, before LotR. If you think about it, it makes a perfect serial format: a familiar character, doesn’t have the problem of the mythical, unwieldy scale of The Silmarillion, gives you plenty of places to visit in Middle-earth with his travels far-and-wide, and plenty of room to crossover with other familiar characters (Elrond, Gandalf), a budding star-crossed love-interest in Arwen, a hero’s journey/discover-his-identity overarching storyline, and above all, plenty of freedom for the writers to play around, within the framework of the backstory Tolkien sketched out. I started out writing this skeptically, but now I’ve actually convinced myself. In the right hands, this could be good!
@27 – that I can agree with! Although I’d still prefer them tackle other genre works just to get more exposure out there.
I thought of the Kushiel books like @23 and others but I’m conflicted. I love the books and characters, and agree that the plot provides a natural way to get in saleable sexposition that’s integral to the world building and plot. I just wonder if some parts that absolutely can’t be toned down without ruining the story (particularly the central scene in Kushiel’s Avatar) are just too raw for TV regardless of the network. On the page it’s close to unbearable; on screen it might come close to torture porn (no pun intended as that scene isn’t sexy to anyone including Phèdre). Viewers might stop watching. It would also be extremely hard to get across the complexities of the body/will dichotomy that are so often important to Phèdre as a character when you lose first person. Finally, the religious mysticism would be a huge acting and SFX challenge.
Not saying it absolutely can’t be done, but it would be an incredibly hard adaptation tonally. I’m still thinking that if we can’t have WoT, then Mistborn would have been a great choice that might be enhanced rather than diminished by playing up the inherent grimdark story elements and adding a bit of the character-driven sex Sanderson wasn’t comfortable writing at that stage of his career. I also badly want to see October Daye.
I’m another who thinks it’s too soon to do a new take on LotR. The Jackson movies are still fairly fresh, and well-enough-done that I don’t think there’s a need to reboot. Although I realize that’s the name of the game in the entertainment industry these days.
Why?
@27 and @28: Strongly agree with both of these sentiments and ideas!
How about Ursula K. Le Guin’s Rocannon’s World, or if you want to do ‘grimdark’, Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword?
I wouldn’t be completely opposed to another version of The Hobbit. No one has gotten it right yet.
While I’d love to see a new series based upon other fantasy novels (Mistborn would be my choice), there’s little like LOTR out there for name recognition among the general population. Amazon wants an instant huge draw from people who specifically are not typical fantasy readers but like Game of Thrones. Nothing that people have mentioned here would be that. Harry Potter is the only thing I can think of that would be comparable.
Someone should pony up and adapt the Thomas Covenant novels asap.
@35 that’s kinda what worries me. Lord of the Rings isn’t as fluffy/naive as people seem to think; there is some real loss, and a real cost to victory. But if they are thinking it’s going to be the next Game of Thrones…or worse, trying to turn it into the next Game of Thrones…no thanks.
Silmarillion could actually do a better job of that, maybe. Not that I want to see elf boobs (please no), it does have dragons and many flawed/tragic characters and a pretty high death count.
Just here to say that a Silmarillion anthology would be AMAZING. I think you could have it all take place in a shared universe (obviously) but Beren & Luthien could be a season, Children of Hurin a season, etc. The title sequence could sum up the creation story (think the way that Firefly began each episode) and further dives into the ancient history could be done each season through flashbacks as the story calls for it. First season begins as the Firstborn wake up (a few episodes in Elwë gets lost for his own story, maybe a separate season about Doriath?) and ends when Fëanor sets foot on Middle-earth. Because you know the story ahead of time, you can lock in characters and film their material all at once and just use it as necessary throughout the seasons as need be. The end of the series is the end of the first age. The spin-off show is the history of Númenor, which is more linear (and more GoT-like). Not sure how many seasons it runs for as you may need to invent some material, or deal with the condensed history in one or two seasons.
Pay me whenever, Amazon.
From what I understood, the adaptation will be on Lord of the Rings only, just focus on a time period before the War of the Ring. This means no Silmarillion, Children of Hurin or Beren and Luthien, unfortunately. However, it does include the appendices to LOTR, which opens a lot of options, for instance the story of Numenor, the fall of Eregion and Moria, or the travels of Aragorn, which I guess will be the most likely choice, because it will be the most familiar to fans of the films. To be fair, Numenor’s time span is larger even than the Silmarillion‘s, so anything beyond Numenor’s final days would be impractical to adapt, as the story would be too broken.
At any rate, I also believe that this is not the best thing to adapt if Amazon is looking for a hit. My suggestion to the list is to adapt the Chronicles of Amber. The series is much beloved, contains a big ensemble of interesting and complex characters, both male and female, and provides a lot of room for artists’ imagination. You have parallel universes, magic, conspiracy, breathtaking views, even full-scale war. Beside, I believe many have forgotten about the book series, so it will be something really fresh.
First, I am totally onboard with this idea, I think this could be better than GOT if it is done right which I hope it will.
Second, I am shocked by the negative responses, This is Lord of The Rings!
I thought someone was working on WOT but I have not read anything lately. I personally would rather see LOTR, Tolkein created the best epic fantasy I ever read. One poster commented on how the dragons would look, HBO made dragons look real for GOT and Netflix did a great job on the monsters for Stranger Things.
@34: I would KILL to see a good adaptation of Rocannon’s World.
And, now that edgy young adult stories are all the rage, I’m surprised no one has tried to option The Beginning Place. In the right hands, it would make an awesome movie or, better, miniseries.
Though an obvious choice, The Left Hand of Darkness would be tricky to adapt, as it would need just the right cast to play the Gethenians. And how to convey the gender transitions of the characters?
@40: But the right adaptation of LOTR could easily include Beren and Luthien and some of the Silmarillion, as flashbacks, stories being told or whatever. After all, several of the LOTR characters did live through these times.
I would’ve thought that one could make a passable series from the Beren-Luthien plus The Children of Hurin and the Huor-Celebrindal plus Earendil-Elwing stories. With flashbacks to the Darkening of Valinor and the (self-)_Exiling of the Noldor, without any trouble.
With regards to alternative SFF stories to base a series on, one could do worse than to adapt Alan Quatermain’s adventures to the big screen – provided that one remembers that H Rider Haggard is not so imperial as people have thought, and he is more sympathetic to his Africans than many another European adventure writer. And there is She, if you want a strong female character, who later turns up as Ayesha … I doubt The Worm Ouroboros is very adaptable to the movie screen. Though I would love to see A Voyage to Arcturus, hint, hint …
I liked Jackson’s FOTR, but the rest of the trilogy was a flop, IMHO. I have long thought that a serial tv series that emphasized character over special effects would be fantastic. I would especially appreciate it if whoever attempts this gets the relationship square between Frodo and Sam — Frodo is the older guy (50s) and Sam is the kid (30s)! But, I suspect that the demands of commercialization will ruin any adaptation, so my hopes are not high.