According to various media sources, the deal has been struck, and Amazon has green-lit a multi-season adaptation set in Middle-earth. The news also confirms that the deal was struck with the Tolkien Estate.
There is no confirmation yet which stories will be adapted, but it has been confirmed that this will NOT involve any events set during the War of the Ring, but rather precede events in The Fellowship of the Ring.
As already speculated in my previous post, we’re looking at a possible glimpse into that 70-year gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; that means an array of narratives such as the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, Strider’s Journeys, the History of Durin’s Folk, Eorl the Young … It’s all there people.
What are your thoughts on this confirmed news?
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A Tolkienist's Perspective 
For just a second I was thinking, “Oh no… why?” However, covering events just before Fellowship? Alright, I’m in.
I assume events involving the capture of Gollum and his subsequent escape from Gandalf may possibly be a part of it? I’m actually pretty excited about this especially from what Richard Armitage said about his willingness to portray Thorin again.
This will now be interesting … whether or not returning characters should be reprised by the same actors. Personally I would not be in favour of that. Let the season be its own thing.
Having thought about it a bit, yes by all means, I hope they avoid established characters for this series.
As much as I would like to see well-developed productions centering on a few different characters released as one-off films, I just don’t think greedy hollyweird is capable of doing this tastefully. The Star Wars abominations they’re churning out these days are getting more and more laughably-bad.
Silmarillion or Appendices? As long as it maintains some of the philosophical and spiritual essence of Tolkien, I am overjoyed at this news!
I doubt The Silmarillion is on the table – from the reports it seems that they’ll tackle events just prior to FoTR or TH – which could include a number of options …
Well, here we go again…..
I wonder what the reason behind this, as it seems it is literally just for money. Yet another regurgitation of a franchise that does not need further remakes so soon all for the lust for the almighty dollar. Unless this is a depiction of something new, and linked to the current films (which is possible given that New Line, Harpercollins AND the Tolkien Estate is on board), then what is the point? Hopefully this is the Silmarillion adaptation we have all waited for for so long.
Secondly, they seem to want to make it the new Game of Thrones. If there are sex scenes, and senseless violence as in GOT, it would pollute the original material in a terrible way. Christopher Tolkien was so adamant about protecting the dignity of his father’s magnificent work and legacy, and to see it dumbed down to scantily clad, eye-candy scenes just for the sake of it would make it not Lord of the Rings anymore, but a false, poser-esque, watered down, imitation thereof.
Yeah it’s pretty obvious that they’re trying to capitulate on GoT’s concluding season and introduce a new series on an established fantasy. Let’s hope they don’t go into too much violence gratification …
Urmut, I’d like to thank you for giving me another reason why I am THRILLED that I’ve never watched a single episode of Thrones. Imagine sensationalized filth that is then resensationalized after being over-sensationalized. I’ll pass.
Here here! Also I read online that the actor who played Gimli has flat out criticized the move to re-produce Tolkien’s LOTR as a purely “greedy” cash grab and that he said Tolkien must be spinning in his grave at what is being done to his work. It really makes me wonder where Christopher Tolkien stands in all of this, particularly as the Estate was onboard with the decision, and why he gave the approval for this.
Any ideas James, Robert, or anyone on this blog?
Well, this could be amazing or terrible. :-Z Can’t wait to see what lies ahead! XD
I’m not sure whether to be excited or dismayed.
There are a lot of possibilities, as you said. It would be very interesting to see the events that happened between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but… movies, TV-shows and TV-series usually have a lot of needless material added. And I really don’t want the people making this series to ruin it in any of the ways possible. If they do, it will be a definite disappointment for me. 😦
Not only for you. If this will turn out that way in the most pessimistic scenario then I will be really disappointed. The more naive and foolish part of me still hopes for more lore friendly, closer to book adaptation than even PJ’s movies, but the more cynical part of me counters that it’s very unlikely :). I only hope it won’t be entirely ‘original’ fanfiction, on the level of Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War video game garbage. If this ‘prequel’ will be based heavily on appendices, plus drawing some material from Lotr and The Hobbit narrative, then I can see a sliver of hope. If this will be say ‘young Aragorn adventures’ series it could be even entertaining. Aragorn traveled all over the world, he even went “into far countries of Rhun and Harad where the stars are strange”, as it was written in appendices “went alone far into the East and deep into the South exploring hearts of men both evil and good and uncovering plots and devices of servants of Sauron” (here of course is room for some literary artistic license and adding stuff), we could see him and Rangers of the North, see Umbar for the first time, have even some sea battles between Corsairs and gondorian ships and famous raid of Aragorn commanding fleet into Umbar to burn down the corsair ships. Also we could see all familiar locations, Shire and Bree which borders were protected by Rangers, also even more of Gondor and Rohan, Mirkwood and even Moria (since Aragorn went through once before as mentioned in Lotr) and many new ones, like maybe ruins of Fornost, Anniminas, hell we could even see him fighting spell casting Barrow-wights (“dreadful spells of the Barrow-wights of which whispered tales spoke”), that would be cool :), well at least this is natural extrapolation, since Rangers in his words were facing all sorts of dark creatures, not only Orcs, Trolls (maybe we could even see how grandpa Arador was killed by them), Wargs but new monsters (after all Tolkien leaves hints towards existence of other creatures).
“When dark things come from the houseless hills, or creep from sunless woods, they fly from us. What roads would any dare to tread, what safety would there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were asleep, or were all gone into the grave?… ‘Strider’ I am to one fat man who lives within a day’s march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly..”
On a (somewhat, kind of… in a way) related note, Richard Armitage voices Trevor Belmont in Castlevania which streams on Netflix. Also in attendance is Graham McTavish as Dracula. Pretty entertaining and even funny at times while being one of the few vamp-related productions I can stomach.
Speaking of Netflix, I don’t know whether you’re familiar with franchise, but Netflix is supposed to make Witcher tv series. Since this fantasy franchise was written by my countryman polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, and as I read all witcher books (not to mention I’m familiar with CD Projekt Red witcher games, probably the best video game adaptation of book series :), at least not like the fanfictiony garbage of Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War), I’m actually curious about this too. Witcher is a bit of a ‘dark fantasy’ kind of similar to Game of Thrones though more focused on specific protagonists, like Geralt of Rivia the titular witcher. As for vampire franchises well let’s say that the only tv show of vampires that I liked was the detective series and sadly one season only before cancellation Moonlight (I also liked Legacy of Kain game series about vampires, and Underworld movie franchise held my interest for a while :)). Also as a curiosity, apparently Ian Mckellen expressed wish to return to role of Gandalf, well that is intriguing idea, though who knows.
How much you want to bet they sex it up to make it like that Game of Thrones crap. The world has changed a lot (for the worse) since Peter Jackson firsts started working on LotR in the late 90s. I’m not excited for what’s coming. For all the faults with LotR and the Hobbit movies, PJ actually cared about the story. Amazon cares about money.
I feel a lot better about it than if it were set during LOTR. 🙂 I really hope they gather a team who loves and understands Middle-earth well. I think that will make all the difference between it being a success or something we fans detest.
I am worried about this rather than excited. I hope they leave The Silmarillion alone. The Silmarillion is my favourite of Tolkien’s books and is a very beautiful and very complicated story which is akin to a history book rather than a novel. I would hate to watch it be torn apart for profit. I would be devastated!
I think the best thing the series can do is recreate the time from The Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings, and that way they can bring back fan-favourites who the majority of the audience will know, still keeping it very relevant to the Lord of the Rings. It is easy to read and to know where Tolkien was going with it, while The Silmarillion was never put together and published by him personally.
But the only thing I really hope is that whoever is given the job of putting this series together loves Tolkien and understands him and his stories in the same way Peter had when he made Lord of the Rings, rather than telling a story to suit what they think the target audience wants to see and commercialising it. Tolkien would never be happy to have watched his name and work be made into anything that has little regard for his stories and barely resembles them at all.
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Skull Rings
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No expectations yet, but hopefully this will be an awakening to the world. Thus, contemporary teens can find a better guidance than Game of Thrones.