Amazon and WB discussing new LORD OF THE RINGS TV series

[Spring Bass]

Maybe they should start off with him in Gondor in disguise as Thorongil, rather than as a young man up in Rivendell. They could always just use flashbacks to show him meeting Arwen, having that amusing chat with Elrond about it, and so forth. It would also give them a lot more characters and plots to work with, because Aragorn himself isn't really enough to hang even a season on - he needs friends, allies, enemies. 

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I think Amazon are massively overreaching here, personally. I can see people tuning in out of curiosity, but without a strong, gripping narrative they're not going to retain viewership.

Their contract lets them get out of it if the show underperforms, right? 

 

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

(and HBO apparently let New Line make the pitch and then effectively laughed them out of the room)

I'm surprised they even thought they had a chance with HBO. There's no chance HBO would take that deal when they already have a massive hit fantasy series that they own the IP for, and are planning a spin-off that might very well cost north of $100 million/season. 

[Darth Richard II]

16 hours ago, Ran said:

Starting earlier than I expected, it seems likely, but makes sense. The Thorongil period in Rohan and Gondor could be something for a later season, if they want to move things ahead.

That said, wow, TORN is run by extremely optimistic boosters of any adaptation: "James, it will be canon.  Amazon has INITIALLY spent $500 mil. on Tolkien’s published book rights, in cooperation with the Tolkien Estate themselves!"

The fuck? That's not how canon works.

Maybe he meant it's canon with regards to the film? I hope

[Ghjhero]

I agree with what’s already been said here. Even as a diehard Tolkien fan I don’t have much interest in seeing an Aragorn series except as a miniseries. Stakes are too low without enough payoff to reward the build up. 

Can someone remind me what the Appendicies cover? Would it be possible for Amazon to make a series about the Last Alliance and the forging of the rings? I’d love to se Celebrimbor’s take told. 

[Darth Richard II]

23 minutes ago, Ghjhero said:

I agree with what’s already been said here. Even as a diehard Tolkien fan I don’t have much interest in seeing an Aragorn series except as a miniseries. Stakes are too low without enough payoff to reward the build up. 

Can someone remind me what the Appendicies cover? Would it be possible for Amazon to make a series about the Last Alliance and the forging of the rings? I’d love to se Celebrimbor’s take told. 

I was under the impression they have the rights to the whole works, now that Christopher is retired from the board.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Ghjhero said:

I agree with what’s already been said here. Even as a diehard Tolkien fan I don’t have much interest in seeing an Aragorn series except as a miniseries. Stakes are too low without enough payoff to reward the build up. 

Can someone remind me what the Appendicies cover? Would it be possible for Amazon to make a series about the Last Alliance and the forging of the rings? I’d love to se Celebrimbor’s take told. 

Unless they've got their claws on the rights to Unfinished Tales, they won't get to show Celebrimbor's body riddled with arrows and used as a battle standard. 

Stuff in the appendices that might be of use:

• A very summarised version of the Downfall of Numenor. You'd need to put a different spin on it to avoid the overlap with the Akallabeth though (unless they've bought the rights to that).
• The Witch-King and Angmar. The demise of Arvedui.
• The Gondorian Kinstrife.
• Helm Hammerhand.

Stuff like the awakening of the Balrog in Moria wouldn't be enough to base a TV series around.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

I was under the impression they have the rights to the whole works, now that Christopher is retired from the board.

If they had the rights to the whole works, they wouldn't be doing Aragorn.

[Ran]

9 hours ago, Fall Bass said:

Maybe they should start off with him in Gondor in disguise as Thorongil, rather than as a young man up in Rivendell.

Yes, that'd be an approach. Something like this could work, IMO.

[HexMachina]

5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Unless they've got their claws on the rights to Unfinished Tales, they won't get to show Celebrimbor's body riddled with arrows and used as a battle standard. 

Stuff in the appendices that might be of use:

• A very summarised version of the Downfall of Numenor. You'd need to put a different spin on it to avoid the overlap with the Akallabeth though (unless they've bought the rights to that).
• The Witch-King and Angmar. The demise of Arvedui.
• The Gondorian Kinstrife.
• Helm Hammerhand.

Stuff like the awakening of the Balrog in Moria wouldn't be enough to base a TV series around.

I’m really surprised they didn’t go with the Witch King and Angmar. Already a pretty memorable/distinctive villain from the PJ movies so you would draw existing fans from there and it’s also a pretty fascinating part of the appendices that is already relatively fleshed out. Plenty of opportunity for flashy battle scenes and lots of gross and gritty stuff if they decided to explore Angmar a bit. Maybe it’s  just my personal preference showing through though because I always found the Northern Kingdoms particularly interesting

[AlpenglowMemories]

With most of this stuff told in summary. it's going be a very, very fan-fic'd show to make it work at all. And the quality of writing will... depend on a lot of factors.  I'm honestly not sure why they didn't just redo Lord of the Rings (The Old Forest! Fatty! Scouring! Ghan-buri Ghan!) other than they want to piggyback on Jackson's Middle-Earth rather than Tolkien's. As it stands, this kinda reminds me of Tolkien abandoning the New Shadow because it lacked the grandeur of what came before... 

 

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I’m really surprised they didn’t go with the Witch King and Angmar. Already a pretty memorable/distinctive villain from the PJ movies so you would draw existing fans from there and it’s also a pretty fascinating part of the appendices that is already relatively fleshed out. Plenty of opportunity for flashy battle scenes and lots of gross and gritty stuff if they decided to explore Angmar a bit. Maybe it’s  just my personal preference showing through though because I always found the Northern Kingdoms particularly interesting

I agree. Especially since Bezos wants another GoT, the fall of Arnor can be shown through a combination of warfare and intrigue.

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I agree. Especially since Bezos wants another GoT, the fall of Arnor can be shown through a combination of warfare and intrigue.

You want them to cover 1000 years?  At the time of Arvedui it isn't a combination of warfare and intrigue.  It's a pathetically tiny "kingdom" being destroyed by a "Nation" stronger than it.  I always found it sad that the small army from Gondor (small for its standards even in its weaker stages) gets mentioned as being like the greatest thing since Last Alliance.

Still a depressing thing but I would watch would be like a hard luck Numonorean show.  Have him/her there at the fall of Arthedain and then join up with Gondor's army for revenge.  Then Not wanting to live in the empty north goes and hangs out with a buddy dwarf in Moria.  Then the balrog comes.  Then not wanting a repeat of that nonsense decides to emigrate to Gondor in a nice sweet villa in Minas Ithil for retirement in 1999.

[Werthead]

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Their contract lets them get out of it if the show underperforms, right? 

 

I'm not sure. The contract is apparently for 5 seasons, guaranteed. Which is insane, but no more insane than paying a quarter billion up front for a project with no creative talent or star power attached.

 

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I was under the impression they have the rights to the whole works, now that Christopher is retired from the board.

 

 

Nope. They have the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Lord of the Rings alone and nothing else.

 

The rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and everything else is with the Tolkien Estate. The Estate is happier with this new deal, but they haven't sold any rights to anything else yet.

 

The film rights to The Hobbit are with MGM and given the problems MGM caused on the movies, New Line aren't in a hurry to deal with them again, so they're avoiding the whole thing.

 

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Maybe he meant it's canon with regards to the film? I hope

 

Given that not even the books are canon with regard to one another (aside from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), there's certainly no way this TV show will be canon to the books. The final arbiter of Middle-earth canon died in 1973, so even Christopher Tolkien making that claim holding the banner of Gondor over his head wouldn't be enough to make this canon.

I'm assuming the same thing, that they mean it will be in-continuity with both movie trilogies.

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'm assuming the same thing, that they mean it will be in-continuity with both movie trilogies.

Doesn't follow from their follow-up to the "canon" claim, which focuses wholly on how much money Amazon spent acquiring the rights and that the Tolkien Estate approves of it. It's not as if the Estate unreservedly approved of the films, for that matter.

I thik they were just letting enthusiasm get away with them. So it goes.

 

[Darth Richard II]

Well, good luck to them with all that.

[Spring Bass]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm not sure. The contract is apparently for 5 seasons, guaranteed. Which is insane, but no more insane than paying a quarter billion up front for a project with no creative talent or star power attached.

That's crazy. I suppose that means we could be in for some interesting watching - if the first season gets rushed out and falls flat, Amazon will fire almost everyone involved and retool the whole thing to try again for Season 2. Assuming it even gets that chance, since I don't think Amazon would be averse to trying to bribe the entire LOTR and Hobbit movie team (including Jackson) to make the first season. They want a hit, not something new. 

They don't really have some of the revenue streams that a cable channel making this would have, either. HBO made back well over the budget of Game of Thrones just on the foreign TV distribution rights, but Amazon is presumably going to want to distribute this worldwide through Amazon Prime Video. I guess maybe they could sell the episodes at the same time, too, for those without a Prime Subscription. 

12 hours ago, AlpenglowMemories said:

With most of this stuff told in summary. it's going be a very, very fan-fic'd show to make it work at all. And the quality of writing will... depend on a lot of factors.  I'm honestly not sure why they didn't just redo Lord of the Rings (The Old Forest! Fatty! Scouring! Ghan-buri Ghan!) other than they want to piggyback on Jackson's Middle-Earth rather than Tolkien's.

That's more or less it. Love or hate the most recent Jackson movies with the Hobbit, but they each made almost a billion dollars at the box office alone (never mind how profitable they were from other revenue streams). Amazon wants a big hit. 

It's a pity, because they could do a Lord of the Rings do-over that's stylistically different and closer to the books. The name recognition alone would get a ton of people watching at least the first season of it, and while the budget would be pretty generous by TV standards, it's still limited compared to blockbuster movie budgets. That could force some economy and creativity in depictions (as John Garth pointed out once, the Jackson movies tended to try and capture some of Tolkien's more evocative and grandeur depictions by making everything enormous). 

I say that as someone who likes the movies and really likes the Fellowship of the Ring movie still. 

[Ran]

Despite rumors in the press, Peter Jackson makes it clear he's not involved in the Amazon LotR prequel project (also, he has no plans to direct a DCU movie, knocking down another rumor that has been going around).

[Spring Bass]

I'm glad to read that. I like the Jackson movies, but I'd really like the Lord of the Rings TV show to not just feel like an extension of that. They should get a show-runner who will put their own stamp on an adaptation, and produce something new and good (I hope - given the amount of money involved, I could see Amazon riding hard on whoever has to adapt this to play it as safe as possible). 

[RhaenysBee]

So I hear it was confirmed that the LOTR prequel is going to be about Aragorn.... (not sure if this is 100% certain or not)

While I am still massively Team Sequel, I can potentially see the way it could work, but it would be an awfully difficult road. There are, however, about ten thousand easy ways it could go completely wrong. 

Casting is a minefield. Ian McKellen probably won't be back as Gandalf, I can potentially see Hugo Weaving or Cate Blanchette making an appearance, but that's probably all about familiar faces. Including Elladan and Elrohir could be a success factor just as much as suicide. Casting a new Arwen is another rocky road and Aragorn is obviously quite a difficult casting decision too. Halbarad sounds like a safe character to adapt and they probably can't screw up his mother more than that horrid fanfilm already did. 

Whatever the plot would be about though... Aragorn with the Dunedain would certainly bore the shit out of me, but that's just a personal preference. Aragorn as Thorongil in Gondor with young Denethor and pirate threats... I can see that happening. Aragorn meeting Gandalf and falling for Arwen are again interesting topics, but highly dependent on good casting. 

I wonder if they will attempt to get Viggo Mortensen back for an old Aragorn tells the story of his youth kinda set up or something, I would certainly appreciate that, but I honestly don't see it coming. 

So yeah, my only expectation from this project is a boost in LOTR memorabilia production. There are painfully few LOTR funko pop figurines on the market at the moment. 

 

[AlpenglowMemories]

https://deadline.com/2018/06/amazon-studios-head-jennifer-salke-strategy-lord-of-the-rings-series-transparent-future-qa-1202407283/

So more info. Still in early days, Jackson may be involved, may shoot in New Zealand, Simon Tolkien is in talks. 

[Calibandar]

Still not sure if this is for real but just saw this on TORN:

 

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2018/07/28/105341-breaking-news-from-amazon-lord-of-the-rings-original-series/

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News just in from our friends at Amazon Studios – team JD Payne and Patrick McKay are on board to develop The Lord of the Rings Original Series. Here’s what the press release tells us:

After a long process and extensive search, which involved going to Middle Earth and back, Amazon Studios is thrilled to share the news with fans, elves and the Amazon Prime Video audience everywhere that we have chosen the duo of JD Payne and Patrick McKay to take us on the development journey for The Lord of The Rings.

Of their involvement in The Lord of the Rings, Payne & McKay said: “The rich world that J.R.R. Tolkien created is filled with majesty and heart, wisdom and complexity. We are absolutely thrilled to be partnering with Amazon to bring it to life anew. We feel like Frodo, setting out from the Shire, with a great responsibility in our care — it is the beginning of the adventure of a lifetime.”

Writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay have been working together since meeting on the high school debate team more than two decades ago. Their most recent projects include writing Star Trek 4 for Paramount and producer J.J. Abrams, adapting Jungle Cruise for Disney and stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, and setting up their original, 2017 Blacklist drama scriptEscape with Academy Award-nominated producer Mike DeLuca.