Amazon and WB discussing new LORD OF THE RINGS TV series

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Why not a Conan tv series? Never been done right before.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

3 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Why not a Conan tv series? Never been done right before.

I don't think Conan is going to be particularly watchable for a 2010's viewer. Not without heaps of deconstruction, which is probably not what you meant by "done right".

[Ran]

A really good Conan series might get you VIKINGS-type numbers. It's not going to be in the GoT/Harry Potter/Star Wars sphere of potential, though.

[polishgenius]

39 minutes ago, Ran said:

A really good Conan series might get you VIKINGS-type numbers. It's not going to be in the GoT/Harry Potter/Star Wars sphere of potential, though.

Is GoT anywhere near the other two or LotR? Pretty sure it's still not really that close. But even if it is, it certainly wasn't when HBO started, which is half my grief about the lazy programming this would be because someone like Amazon should be able to grow a less ubiquitously known property into something GoT sized rather than going for the lazy option.

[Mladen]

OK, here is the question. What is the point of this? What Tolkien Estate or ME Enterprises hope to gain with his?

If we exclude the perversely high sum of $200 million, what is the story here? Is it Christopher Tolkien's desire to get "more correct" adaptation of LOTR and Hobbit? I seriously have no idea what people are trying ti get from this one. 

[Mladen]

3 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Is GoT anywhere near the other two or LotR? Pretty sure it's still not really that close. But even if it is, it certainly wasn't when HBO started, which is half my grief about the lazy programming this would be because someone like Amazon should be able to grow a less ubiquitously known property into something GoT sized rather than going for the lazy option.

It is not there, but I believe it is rather close. It grew over the years becoming a behemoth it is now. Every year, it breaks the record in viewership, not to mention the record-breaking downloads. It has become rather ubiquitous. I am from Serbia, and the show is rather popular here. I have professional ties with Japan and Philippines and we talked about GOT. IDK, but it does seem globally popular. Perhaps not as LOTR/Harry/SW, due to the fact that it is not children-friendly, but it is rather close. 

[Ran]

GoT has an enormous amount of public cachet and global viewership. Consider:

FotR made over $313 million domestically. Average movie ticket price at the time was $5.56, so 56.29 million tickets were purchased. It made more globally -- $555 million in foreign box office -- but while one might expect average ticket places overseas are lower, in fact the U.S. is on the lower end of the scale among first world nations, and the vast majority of its foreign earnings come in countries where ticket prices are more, not less, expensive. Still, lets say they have $5.56 average between them all, and you're at 100 million foreign viewers, or 156 million viewers globally.

Now GoT: 31 million legal viewers in the U.S. I've not seen an aggregate of non-US legal viewers anywhere, but I know it was approaching 3 million per episode in the UK. But we do have another statistic: illegal viewership, which is naturally a much bigger number these days then it would have been for FotR back in 2001. According to TorrentFreak, season 7 was illegally streamed, torrented, etc. 140 million times _per episode_. If we assume that UK+all others might amount to 10 million total legit viewers (I think this is very conservative), you're looking at 181 million viewers per episode globally.

So, yeah, GoT is "as big" as LotR when looked at in global terms, and it's not far off simply in national terms once you factor in illict viewers within the U.S. Obviously, the fact that there are way more illegal viewers is not great, but it's simply a matter of fact that Amazon would be very unlikely to be able to _improve_ on GoT's legal viewership, simply because GoT's legal viewership is unprecedented for a drama program since the diversification of television this millenium.

[polishgenius]

Fair enough. I know it's difficult to compare between different media, anyway. I can only go off the anegdotal evidance of the circles I move in where far more people have either read, watched or both LotR when that isn't nearly true of GoT/aSoIaF (though it's far more true than it used to be), but obviously my circles aren't everyone's circles.

But still. The point about growing a new audience remains. It's obviously doable.

[the tower of albion]

On 04/11/2017 at 1:37 PM, Werthead said:

 HBO have apparently already turned down the deal, citing their commitment to the Game of Thrones franchise and future spin-offs,

Isn't HBO owned by Warner Brothers? Weird.

[GAROVORKIN]

8 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Why not a Conan tv series? Never been done right before.

They did a Conan tv series a number of years ago and it was pretty dire, It was poorly written and produced.

 

But I do think a Conan could still work.

[GAROVORKIN]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

A really good Conan series might get you VIKINGS-type numbers. It's not going to be in the GoT/Harry Potter/Star Wars sphere of potential, though.

But done well, it could find an audience. 

[Werthead]

14 hours ago, Slurktan said:

They could also do something like they are doing with the video games Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War and make shit up and be a prequel to the movies or a sequel.  Or they could do a straight Hobbit - Aragorns adventures in Rohan, gondor, Umbar - Balins deep  dive - fellowship - complete war of the ring (including Battles of dale and mirkwood) etc.

The stories of Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are complete bollocks though. That would be horrendous.

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I for one am very interested to see where this leads. It has the potential to be *gasp* more faithful than what Jackson produced? TV is certainly a better format than movies to tell a story as expansive as LOTR. Why not give it a chance?

 

Because there is no logical gain that can be achieved from a TV series. Okay, you might get Beregond and Imrahil in it, but is that it? People are going to get excited because Goldberry and Arwen's brothers show up? I don't think so.

 

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I love how y'all think Jackson's vision is the be-all and end-all of LOTR visual storytelling after it was so roundly criticized by fans of the books.

 

There are ways that Jackson's films can be improved on. Stop Slimer from saving Minas Tirith, make Faramir's arc a bit more coherent, show Denethor as a more complex and nuanced character (no disrespect to Noble, who did outstanding work with limited material). But these are reasonably minor plot points. I don't see them warranting remaking the entire story from scratch. 

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Harry Potter, which I already mentioned. Hell, even a remake of the books rather than an original story strikes me as more plausible. The film adaptations were uneven, never received the level of critical or awards  notice of LotR, it's been 16 years since the first film (if it's not too soon for a LotR remake, it's not too soon for a Potter remake),  I'm assuming they cut a lot of minor incidents to fit then into films, and I feel the mania over the actors has greatly lessened while the interest in the setting remains very high.

Amazon should be talking to WB and Rowling about that, not LotR.

 

I agree with this. The Potter movies are well-regarded but a huge amount of story got left on the cutting room floor (especially from Books 4, 5 and 6, but all of them to an extent), which wasn't really the case with LotR (the Scouring excepted). You could also even out the stories, since each season would be a school year, have more stuff happening to Harry and co in the first year and so on. It would allow Rowling to write new material without writing whole new books and could add greater resonance to the story.

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Isn't HBO owned by Warner Brothers? Weird.

 

Different divisions, who for these purposes would be treated like any other company.

 

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Why not a Conan tv series? Never been done right before.

 

A new Conan movie is in development, with Arnold reprising the role in his old age "King of Aquilonia" days, which I tihnk puts paid to that idea.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

But done well, it could find an audience. 

Sure, but the word is Bezos has demanded his company find something that will be Amazon's GoT. This is why, presumably, he's personally involved in the negotiations over LotR rights, because he thinks it has that potential. Conan doesn't, IMO, even if done well.

[GAROVORKIN]

58 minutes ago, Ran said:

Sure, but the word is Bezos has demanded his company find something that will be Amazon's GoT. This is why, presumably, he's personally involved in the negotiations over LotR rights, because he thinks it has that potential. Conan doesn't, IMO, even if done well.

 

Still, Im intrigued by the idea of of LOTR series.

[Eggegg]

I think a really well done Conan series could be amazing, quite pulpy, but not cheap. Maybe adventure of the week kind of thing.. but not stupid in a Kevin Sorbo kind of way. I highly doubt that would ever happen. The latest Conan movie didn't really capture the vibe at all IMO. 

I'd also love some sort of insane Elric of Melnibone series as well. That would never happen.

 

 

[Corvinus85]

17 hours ago, Werthead said:

That said, that normally doesn't apply to something as iconic as LotR. Those movies were utterly transformative in a way very few movies are. The original Star Wars trilogy, The Matrix etc at the only other films really in that league. If you want to remake them it would be because either you have a dramatically different interpretation in mind (i.e. original BSG to neo-BSG) - and I don't see how that can work for an adaptation of pre-existing books - or because the original wasn't very successful - not the case here - or the original version left stuff out.

The extended versions of the LotR trilogy are 11 hours long already. You add in say an hour for the Barrow-wights and Tom Bombadil, another 2-3 hours for the Scouring of the Shire and...then what? I don't see how they're going to get multiple seasons out of this, unless it's 6 hour-long episodes per book and they really do everything that's on the page. But is that really necessary? What does that give you that Jackson's versions don't, considering the probability of having a less impressive cast, production design and location filming?

Challenge accepted. I'm sure you are familiar with Shadow of Mordor, and it's recently released sequel. If they can't get the Tolkien Estate to expand their rights, I can see them going with made up stories, like that game is. Unless Bezos is such a massive fan, that he commands a faithful adaptation to be made.

And while I would love to see a Conan series, I agree with @Ran that it wouldn't be such a high profile, GoT-busting show. Then again, ASoIaF wasn't that high profile either, until the show really picked up in seasons 2-3. Besides the shocking twists GoT gave us, to really get tongues wagging, it is also has a large, rich group of compelling characters. Conan doesn't. And while LOTR does, too, I think it will be harder to make them likable to the modern audience, as the GoT characters were made likable. But I think The Wheel of Time has that potential, so Amazon should stick with that. 

 

[Darth Richard II]

17 hours ago, Ferrum Aeternum said:

Suggest something that will have the same draw as a new LOTR TV series. Go ahead, I'll wait as long as you like.  

I love how y'all think Jackson's vision is the be-all and end-all of LOTR visual storytelling after it was so roundly criticized by fans of the books.

Harry Potter

[Darth Richard II]

I wonder how much of this has to do with Tolkien's absolute hatred of the films.

[redeagl]

This is all kinds of wrong.

[GAROVORKIN]

4 hours ago, Eggegg said:

I think a really well done Conan series could be amazing, quite pulpy, but not cheap. Maybe adventure of the week kind of thing.. but not stupid in a Kevin Sorbo kind of way. I highly doubt that would ever happen. The latest Conan movie didn't really capture the vibe at all IMO. 

I'd also love some sort of insane Elric of Melnibone series as well. That would never happen.

 

 

The 2011 film was lousy .