'...for 45 minutes every Monday in 22 episodes, soon on Prime!'
A JRR Tolkien expert working on Amazon’s forthcoming multi-series adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has claimed that the retail and streaming giant has been refused permission by the estate to use the bulk of the book’s plot.
Eh...?
Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, who is supervising the show’s development, told German fansite Deutsche Tolkien that the estate has refused to allow the series to be set during any period other than the Second Age of Middle-earth.
This means Amazon’s adaptation will not cross over at all with events from the Third Age, which were dramatised in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy and sees hobbit Frodo Baggins destroy the One Ring.
So, it's a prequel? You know, I think fans and viewers will still tune in, somehow.
I'm not so sure, Peter Jackson already did a lot of work to wreck the stupendous legacy of his LOTR films by making those three bloated and crappy Hobbit movies
ReplyDeleteBit of a non-story this, obviously done for marketing purposes. The whole Second Age thing is a dirty great goldmine for a multi-series magnum opus, what with the rise of Numenor, Sauron forging the Rings and corrupting everybody, and a dirty great battle at the end, and Tolkien didn't really write it in a whole lot of detail.
ReplyDeleteThe giveaway being that Shippey said that they can not do anything that changes Tolkien's canon, and fans do like a good canonical argument.
Ha! I still can't get out of the Goblin caves after all these years...
ReplyDeleteYou had permission to adapt the, frankly unreadable, history of Middle Earth and now you are panicking...
Diddums
As a Tolkien fanatic - I wrote to the great man in 1965 when I was 10 (and he replied!) - there's a whole heap more stuff in the pre LOTR, and it would make great TV, so I'm not fussed about the LOTR stuff being out of scope.
ReplyDeleteOh god, that line is from that game on the Acorn BBC thing that always sees you fried by a dragon while clinging to the underside of a barrel floating down a river. Thanks for bringing back a long buried memory!!!
ReplyDelete"I'm not so sure, Peter Jackson already did a lot of work to wreck the stupendous legacy..."
ReplyDeleteYou're not a fan? I enjoyed them!
"Bit of a non-story this, obviously done for marketing purposes."
They are getting more and more cunning, these marketing chappies.
Wouldn't work if we didn't have 24/7/365 news cycles and lazy churnalism, though...
"Ha! I still can't get out of the Goblin caves after all these years..."
It was before the Internet, and cheating by watching YouTube!
"... there's a whole heap more stuff in the pre LOTR, and it would make great TV,..."
And will long after Harry Potter is forgotten.
"Thanks for bringing back a long buried memory!!"
That's what I'm here for... ;)