New Lord of the Rings TV Series
Mon, November 13th


Amazon has officially greenlit one show that it hopes to rule them all.

The company has made a multi-season production commitment to a television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings.

It’s a major deal securing one of the biggest brands in pop culture for what’s likely to be one of the most expensive TV shows ever made. The series will explore storylines set before the events in the first LOTR novel, The Fellowship of the Ring.

In other words: The war to destroy the One Ring as chronicled in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy of films will not be told in the TV version. So this story is either set before The Hobbit or in between The Hobbit and LOTR.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

The Fellowship Of The Ring was pretty good, but each subsequent Middle-earth film was worse than the one before it. I have very low expectations for this series.

morningsong said:

LoTR chats and boards seem to be one of the most loyal and consistent fanbases I've seen. It may even surpassed ST loyalist. Personally I'm not excited about the TV series, I was no where near as thrilled with the Hobbit movies as I was with the LoTR movies, what possible material would be used? Maybe the Silmarillion is the guide, I know that would be exciting to the Tolkien fanbases. Maybe?

Amazon Prime ain't HBO but I'll subscribe when the series airs...I really wish HBO had said yes a long time ago, but they felt it was too expensive to produce...

I will be thoroughly disappointed if Amazon does not hire/cast Sir Ian McKellen...Gandalf is the ONLY character that we need to see transition from the Big screen to the small screen..I bet Ian would jump at the chance...

I'm not holding my breath...

Chancellor said:

Amazon Prime ain't HBO but I'll subscribe when the series airs...I really wish HBO had said yes a long time ago, but they felt it was too expensive to produce...

I will be thoroughly disappointed if Amazon does not hire/cast Sir Ian McKellen...Gandalf is the ONLY character that we need to see transition from the Big screen to the small screen..I bet Ian would jump at the chance...

I'm not holding my breath...

I'm hoping it's based on stuff actually written by Tolkien, like parts of The Silmarillion (which would make a good TV series if done well) rather than shit that they make up themselves.

kpowers said:

morningsong said:

LoTR chats and boards seem to be one of the most loyal and consistent fanbases I've seen. It may even surpassed ST loyalist. Personally I'm not excited about the TV series, I was no where near as thrilled with the Hobbit movies as I was with the LoTR movies, what possible material would be used? Maybe the Silmarillion is the guide, I know that would be exciting to the Tolkien fanbases. Maybe?

It's true. But hey, Tolkein stories are older.

As reported by TheOneRing.net, 93-year-old Christopher Tolkien officially retired from Tolkien Estate on August 31, hinting at his departure in the preface for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beren and Luthien, which Tolkien edited and published earlier this year. The revered Tolkien scholar, who spent decades organizing J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate, was notoriously protective of his father’s work. Movie rights for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings had already been licensed in the 1960s (leading to the Warner Bros. films that Christopher Tolkien reportedly hated, according to a 2012 interview with Le Monde), but little else of J.R.R. Tolkien’s property rights have ever been parceled out. In fact, Warner Bros. and Tolkien Estate recently settled a legal dispute over use of Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie characters in video games and slot machines. Christopher Tolkien wasn’t keen to expand the franchise, it’s this dispute, among others, that always lead people to think that the Peter Jackson movies were all we’d get.

Now that Christopher Tolkien has retired, the “rights frenzy” for his properties can begin, as Tolkien enthusiast Michael Martinez wrote on his blog. Currently, the plans are for an Amazon series set in the world of The Lord of the Rings, which reportedly came after a bidding war between several networks. Given that Tolkien Estate incorporated in 2011 and Christopher Tolkien is no longer holding the reins, it looks to be open season for Tolkien films, shows, theme parks, or pretty much anything else you could imagine.

morningsong said:

Maybe they will retale the original tale of how man and elf together tried to defeate the Dark Lord like they flashed back to in th e LOTR Trilogy. That being either the end point of the TV series or the beginning. That would be interesting to me.

Not saying this can't be good, but they're doing this very much because of the GoT hype. I think Jeff Bezos even said to his creatives he wants a show on the popularity level of GoT.