Warner Bros wants to make Lord of the Rings films. Not remakes, fyi.

[MarkB]

Maybe a prequel to the original trilogy telling the story of how the company obtained the blueprints for Mount Doom.

 

[delericho]

If they can get the rights to Tolkien's other writings, especially his "great tales" (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, the Fall of Gondolin), there are some good movies to be made. If they can't, and they're stuck respinning the same 50 pages of the LotR appendices endlessly, then it would be better just to leave it alone.

 

[JAMUMU]

If they can get the rights to Tolkien's other writings, especially his "great tales" (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, the Fall of Gondolin), there are some good movies to be made. If they can't, and they're stuck respinning the same 50 pages of the LotR appendices endlessly, then it would be better just to leave it alone.

I think there's room for some really interesting films still left in the old IP-horse yet. Some ways I can think to still flog it:

1) A Waiting For Godot type take on the mythos with a standard party of Middle Earthen action adventurers sitting around a hillock in Rohan arguing about the fact that this new existential threat is taking bloody ages to appear. In the post-credits scene we see that they actually missed it about half-way through.

2) A film where Sauron and Galadriel swap bodies but have to pretend to be each other all through the second and third acts, before being brought together to swap back during the climax and realising it's a meet cute now that they've, yanno. Felt each other's presents. Not sure about sequels to this one though I think a TV series exploring their new relationship, how they get on with their old friends, new neighbours etc. might have some legs. You could do each episode in a different style of fantasy fiction, ending the series with a tie-in to a new D&D movie.

3) A remake of Ghostbusters 2 replacing Vigo the Carpathian with Sauron and the Peter MacNicol character with Gollum. Or heck, why not make it Morgoth and Sauron? MacNicol's still around as far as I know and I'd love to see him reprise the role, with a twist!

4) A close-up of a giant red-lipsticked mouth shouting and babbling all the words from the Silmarillion at the audience for 7 hours, but not in the order they appear in the book.

 

[Kaodi]

If there is no room for other stories in the world of the supposed paragon of worldbuilding does that not suggest that we misjudged how deep the world was somewhere along the way?
Maybe they could tell a story about the history of Gondor. Surely, over thousands of years, there must have been (other) people who questioned the system of "stewards" and why they were waiting for a "king" . Maybe they could explore how that fell through, perhaps with reference to the difficulty of change while existing next to an ever-present threat.
Or something along those lines.
Or maybe just actually try to explore East-Earth or South-Earth instead of sticking to Middle-Earth.

 

[Zaukrie]

This thread kind of proves my point.... That serious fans want only the books, and not totally new stories in the same world. I really don't get that. We have those stories.

 

[Jer]

If there is no room for other stories in the world of the supposed paragon of worldbuilding does that not suggest that we misjudged how deep the world was somewhere along the way?

I mean I personally think that Middle Earth's storytelling appeal is limited, but I don't think people are saying that there's no room for other stories. More that there's no room for stories that aren't from the mind of JRR Tolkien.

 

[JAMUMU]

If there is no room for other stories in the world of the supposed paragon of worldbuilding does that not suggest that we misjudged how deep the world was somewhere along the way?
Maybe they could tell a story about the history of Gondor. Surely, over thousands of years, there must have been (other) people who questioned the system of "stewards" and why they were waiting for a "king" . Maybe they could explore how that fell through, perhaps with reference to the difficulty of change while existing next to an ever-present threat.
Or something along those lines.
Or maybe just actually try to explore East-Earth or South-Earth instead of sticking to Middle-Earth.

I don't think it's that the depth has been misjudged. The world-building is deep and wide and intricate but most importantly was already used to tell THE STORY OF STORIES! for that particular setting. Anything that fits into the world must be of small scale and scope and that doesn't gel well with the Hollywood EVEN MORE WOWIE ZOWIE! template that's going to be used to produce material that's always-already going to be some photocopy of the originals (in this case the books and the first trilogy).

Unless you ramp up the threat, ramp up the action, and by then is it still Lord of the Rings? Or is it LotR vs Mars Attacks!?

 

[nevin]

Considering Amazon's foray into making one I'd be leery of them. It's really hard to be succesful with a rabid fan base when you make something new.

 

[JAMUMU]

Considering Amazon's foray into making one I'd be leery of them. It's really hard to be succesful with a rabid fan base when you make something new.

Yeah I agree, but I also think the general casual fan base are a problem too, because they've seen it before, and this'll just be more of the same. At least with the new D&D movie it's a "fast-paced, irreverant take on the fantasy genre with screwball dialogue and characters you can relate to" which is a break from the tone and tropes set by the LotR and Hobbit movies.

 

[darjr]

I like the series.