A high-concept, wildly expensive Lord of the Rings adaptation from Warner Bros. TV is being shopped around at Amazon and Netflix.
It’s official: the search for the ‘next Game of Thrones‘ has come full-circle, with the J.R.R. Tolkien tale that inspired George R.R. Martin in the first place being re-adapted for the small screen.
According to Deadline, the Tolkien estate is shopping around a new adaptation of the Lord of the Rings novels “with a whopping price tag.”
The series has been offered to Amazon, Netflix and HBO, but HBO has allegedly passed due to the staggering rights payment (upwards of $250 million) — rights that are said to be limited to certain characters.
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I’m not gonna lie: as a huge fan of both the book and movie trilogy, this news is upsetting. While Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie series wasn’t the first attempt to adapt the Tolkien classic, it was far and away the best — and, arguably, the best movie adaptation of a book series period.
It’s hard to imagine any act following the one adaptation to rule them all, especially so relatively soon after the movies’ initial release (2001-2003), and with the final Hobbit movie only three years behind us.
While literally everything is getting a reboot these days, it would be nice to imagine that some things might be considered good enough to stand the test of time — and the Lord of the Rings movies don’t even look dated yet. They can surely be allowed to reign for another 10-20 years before a new version takes their place.
However, in the interest of fairness: while the Lord of the Rings adaptation was perfect within its own parameters, there are plenty of ways a TV series version could represent Tolkien’s novels in ways that the original was not able to; it’s not like a potential series would be a remake of the movies, after all.
For one, the series might explore some parts of the books that Jackson’s version left out or changed. Tom Bombadil, Gandalf and Aragorn’s hunt for Gollum, and the Scouring of the Shire were just some of the many omissions the movies made to keep the story concise.
Assuming that the TV version would go back to the source material as opposed to trying to emulate the movies, it could practically tell a completely different story by putting the emotional weight on other scenes or relationships than the movie did, potentially sating the needs of book fans who did not feel like the movies represented their reading experience.
(Plus, let’s not forget that many of the most iconic moments in the LotR movies were actually fabrications by Jackson and his screenwriting partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Gandalf might actually say, “You cannot pass,” in this one.)
Secondly and more importantly, The Lord of the Rings movies are very white. They got away with being very white because they were conceptualized in the late ’90s, where filmmakers weren’t held to higher standards by mainstream audiences. It’s a different time now, and there is no way a LotR TV series would be allowed to emulate the whiteness of the originals.
And, while I personally thought the movies did the few female characters in Tolkien’s tale justice (even improved them, honestly), an expanded version of the story might even allow Arwen, Galadriel and Éowyn to shine even more than the movies did.
However this project pans out, hopefully fans of the movies will not feel like a new adaptation taints the previous one. I personally consider the LotR trilogy the best movie series of all time, but Tolkien’s novels (which I also adore) have so much untapped potential in them that I could see a TV version being really good too, as long as it’s not a money-grab gimmick.
It would need to be significantly longer, as well, since the extended versions of the movies (the only versions worth watching) add up to about 12 hours, which is already as long as a modern-day season of television.