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

[Sepulchrave II]

After the RoP debacle, I can't say I'm holding out much hope.

Unless the Tolkien Estate releases the rights to other works, we'll have to wait until they enter the public domain.

There's an interesting breakdown of that legal minefield here:

link

 

[MNblockhead]

I like the series.

Me too. But we should keep it on the down low.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I think The One Ring RPG showed there can be plenty of new stories set in the 60+ years in between The Hobbit and LOTR. I would hope for movies set during this same time. And for stuff from that time in the books, you could have the failed attempt at retaking Moria, for one. And movies about a younger Aragorn would be good too. I still remember how the initial rumors for the Amazon series were about that.

 

[delericho]

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?

The problem is that Middle Earth is so foundational to modern fantasy that any story set there that isn't directly derived from Tolkien's words is basically just "fantasy lands of generica" again. And we've had at least three series of that in the last 12 months: Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, and Willow.

 

[Kaodi]

I wonder whether if you were going to try and make a sequel to the Lord of the Rings you would have to set it, once again, like a thousand years later, at the very end of the Elessarian golden age. And instead of having a "new shadow" the enemy is rooted in the fact that prosperity has made people covetous and bold to the point where they revisit some of the evils of before, as humans are wont to do. So you have an enemy that can challenge Gondor but their power is not rooted in dark magic (though maybe some people are able to employ a bit of dark magic at the margins).

 

[MarkB]

I wonder whether if you were going to try and make a sequel to the Lord of the Rings you would have to set it, once again, like a thousand years later, at the very end of the Elessarian golden age. And instead of having a "new shadow" the enemy is rooted in the fact that prosperity has made people covetous and bold to the point where they revisit some of the evils of before, as humans are wont to do. So you have an enemy that can challenge Gondor but their power is not rooted in dark magic (though maybe some people are able to employ a bit of dark magic at the margins).

It feels like that would lose all the trappings that would be the selling point of a movie set in this world. Most likely no elves, and a more mundane conflict more akin to Game of Thrones than Lord of the Rings.

 

[Dausuul]

What's the specific source of the screenshot quote, please?

While I know that the chances of this happening is virtually nil, but in light of the fact that Christopher Tolkien is no longer a roadblock, they could renegotiate with the Tolkien Estate for the rights to The Silmarillion which would give access to many epic tales. Three specific ones of the First Age I could easily imagine being big budget action movies would be The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin while using Quenta Silmarillion/War of the Jewels as a bridge to tie together these separate tales. If they wished to continue to the Second Age they could then do Akallabêth/Downfall of Númenor.

That... is a brilliant idea. I've wondered for a long time how one could possibly do justice to the Silmarillion on screen; a sequence of connected but stand-alone movies would be perfect.

But it'd be pretty hard to convince the studio not to bollix it up. Most of the stories in the Silmarillion are grand tragedies, and Hollywood doesn't like tragedy.

 

[Kaodi]

It has been properly established on screen that orcs are derived from elves. With no dark lord perhaps orcs are on the verge of being exterminated, or perhaps their descendants are slowly "revolving" away from their most brutish forms to the point where they more resemble Adar and their elven forebears while still being decidedly orcish.
Not to mention there are still dwarves, hobbits, Ents, Bombadilses, and so on.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It has been properly established on screen that orcs are derived from elves. With no dark lord perhaps orcs are on the verge of being exterminated, or perhaps their descendants are slowly "revolving" away from their most brutish forms to the point where they more resemble Adar and their elven forebears while still being decidedly orcish.
Not to mention there are still dwarves, hobbits, Ents, Bombadilses, and so on.

If we are talking the 4th Age, or the Age of Man, I don't remember if Tolkien ever wrote what became of orcs, the way he did about elves, dwarves, and hobbits.

 

[JAMUMU]

If we are talking the 4th Age, or the Age of Man, I don't remember if Tolkien ever wrote what became of orcs, the way he did about elves, dwarves, and hobbits.

Hmmm if I remember correctly all the MERP PCs wiped them out.

More seriously, the 4th Age probably has the most potential for new movies. Magic fading, elves disappearing, hobbits going into stealth mode, orcs as both threat and sympathetically doomed characters, human nobility on the wane. And one last existential threat* that needs magic, elves, hobbits, orc-friends and supernaturally-noble humans to defeat.

*The Coming of the Supermarket Car Parks