With adaptations of his books all but exhausted, a biopic of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit author J.R.R. Tolkien is being developed by Fox Searchlight.
As Executive Producer of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes franchise as well as Fox’s New Girl, Peter Chernin is developing the project alongside Fox Searchlight, with a script being penned by David Gleeson, who has previously written the sci-fi spec script The End of History.
The Hollywood Reporter, who broke the news, writes that the biopic will chronicle the key events in Tolkien’s life leading up to when he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the mid-20th Century. Some of these events include fighting for England in World War I, being trained as a codebreaker during World War II, and, perhaps most famously, his friendship with leading British authors of the day, including The Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis.
Interestingly, a movie adaptation of the fictional novel Here, There Be Dragons, which chronicles Tolkien and Lewis’ friendship has been in development at Warner Bros., although it is unclear how similar the projects will be. It is also unclear whether the Tolkien estate will be involved at all in development. Regardless, the options seem endless given the time in history that Tolkien was alive and the great impact he’s had on literature.
Development seems quite early on, as no targeted filming or release date was mentioned, although it’s likely Fox Searchlight will want to release the film sooner rather than later in order to take advantage of the hype around the The Hobbit films.
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