If no more middle earth movies are made, what should fill the void?

[marcvader]

Would love if they could do a good film set in the Forgotten Realms. It could be a huge universe.

Drizzt, Elminster etc... There are loads of films they could do.

Man, don't even... This has to happen!

 

[SuperFerret]

Unless it's a Dungeons and Dragons movie, I don't care.

 

[R_Hythlodeus]

as much as I love all three Sky adaptations, a blockbuster franchise of the Discworld series would make me a happy hippo.

also: Hasbro has regained the rights for D&D from Courtney Solomon iirc. So, a D&D franchise set in the Forgotten Realms setting would be nice, as long as it doesn't feature a certain Drow.

And, finally, movies based on the Pathfinder RPG, because it probably has the best background I've read in a high fantasy campaign setting for decades.

 

[marcvader]

as much as I love all three Sky adaptations, a blockbuster franchise of the Discworld series would make me a happy hippo.

also: Hasbro has regained the rights for D&D from Courtney Solomon iirc. So, a D&D franchise set in the Forgotten Realms setting would be nice, as long as it doesn't feature a certain Drow.

And, finally, movies based on the Pathfinder RPG, because it probably has the best background I've read in a high fantasy campaign setting for decades.

You don't like Drizzt?

 

[Victarion]

Pipe dream that would likely be a disaster

Spoiler

 

[marcvader]

Ooh yeah, Elric of Melnibone.

 

[Victarion]

Ooh yeah, Elric of Melnibone.

Corum might work, too. The first Corum book is basically full of grimdark, what with the rape, violence, and mutilation Corum suffers. The last three take place on a world locked in perpetual winter by otherworldly entites called the Foi Myore...all the snow plus the undead might be evocative of another series that's popular...

 

[Vartha]

Well, honestly, I always felt like LotR came in right around the time that I was figuring out the Star Wars prequels were a bust, so the Middle Earth movies were already filling the Star Wars void for me (and the Hobbit movies haven't really done much for that, tbh). If Star Wars comes back with a vengeance next year, then as far as I'm concerned there is no void, lol.

But yeah, I think the upcoming batch of video game adaptations actually have the potential to be the first GOOD video game-based movies ever, and if any one of those spawns a good franchise (Warcraft, Assassins Creed, Uncharted), then those combined with the Star Wars and ongoing superhero franchises will give me more than enough fantastical adventure and will almost certainly leave me with zero longing for Middle Earth.

There's also a return to the Harry Potter-verse coming up too, but I bit more wary of that one, largely because I don't yet know anything about it, really. But that was a VERY rich universe with plenty of potentially good stories left in it, imo, so it could spawn a new franchise, too.

That said, I'm still waiting on my Dark Tower adaptation. Zelda would be cool, too.

Yeah I agree. I need to get caught up on my Star Wars movies. Murphy had the series up north, but When I moved I kinda lost the ability to view them at anytime. lol
Tho Games of Thrones is Awesome, I agree with Marc and a few of the guys the Elric run needs to be made into a film.

 

[Double D]

An updated version of Masters of the Universe.

 

[Lord]

Guess i should post Berserk again

Most are probably turned off due to it being anime, but trust me when i say that it's one of the fantasy stories most worth adapting right now, with scenes to rival Game of Thrones. The story is originaly a manga, there have been 2 anime adaptations trying to adapt the same arc, the first one worked well, while the second had an awfuly fast pacing, so i think it can be done in live-action, as the story hasn't completely been done justice yet aside from the original manga.

To be honet, most Fantasy novels nowadays just seem like copies of what came before, and even those that don't, end up having some problem in the quality of their stories. Going after RPGs seems a bit too much like scratching the bottom of the barrel. I also vote for The Dark Tower and Chronicles of Prydain.

Cinema or TV, this story needs to be done

[YT]FtcW5b2_Pes[/YT]

 

[R_Hythlodeus]

You don't like Drizzt?

as a DM for more than 15 years I do have certain reservations against that character for implementing the idea that it is okay to be the only good member of an incredibly evil race, the sole exception with a very tragic past. You have no idea how many of those 'execeptions' I had to master. I blame all those LG Drows, Duergars, Tieflings or Orcs, disgusted and outcast by their own culture on R. A. Salvatore

 

[green]

Malazan Book of the Fallen

I can't even think how they'd do that without leaving out a ton.
It's almost too ambitious...it's up there in my list of wants along with The Black Company though.



Hopefully Guy Ritchies King Arthur series is good and fills the void.

 

[gwynplaine]

 

[:eek:]

While not fantasy in the vein of Tolkien's work I don't see any reasons at the moment that the Avatar-sequels shouldn't be able to fill the void in December in the upcoming years when it comes to epic and visually stunning movies.

 

[Lord]

While not fantasy in the vein of Tolkien's work I don't see any reasons at the moment that the Avatar-sequels shouldn't be able to fill the void in December in the upcoming years when it comes to epic and visually stunning movies.

I agree with that, but if we go there, there's also Star Wars, and possibly some Marvel films a way (they will finish in 2019 with a super epic), Pirates of the Caribbean and the new Harry Potter spin offs also have the potencial to be visualy stunning fantasies. Warcraft is also coming up a look that is similar to the Tolkien movies, but that is also quite different and with armors that are both realistic but also a bit more cartoony than common.

There are a lot of current running films that fit the mold, but i think what the OP is looking for are new fantasy titles for the big screen, instead of what's already being released. I think Warcraft may be the only film that is exactly that, but we'll see how good it is and if it manages to spawn a film franchise.

 

[Victarion]

Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy would make a great film trilogy, especially following the Middle Earth films.

 

[Curmudgeon]

Thirded.

They'd need to cut a lot. Get it down to around 5/6 films though.

True, but I think they could do it without losing too much. A few of those books could have stood to be condensed into one.

 

[Moridin]

Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.

4th'd. But WoT really needs to be a TV/Netflix series. It's way to long for film.

For comparison, all 3 LotR books together are 473,000 words. Book1 of WoT is 305,000 words, and there's 14 books.

Even cutting a lot you'd end up with 9 or 10 long films worth of material.

 

[Apollo]

A decent Thor movie

As much as I liked the first 1. The 2nd was just ok... but I am starting to understand the complaints.

 

[SuperFerret]

as a DM for more than 15 years I do have certain reservations against that character for implementing the idea that it is okay to be the only good member of an incredibly evil race, the sole exception with a very tragic past. You have no idea how many of those 'execeptions' I had to master. I blame all those LG Drows, Duergars, Tieflings or Orcs, disgusted and outcast by their own culture on R. A. Salvatore

I've disallowed most of those races (except for orcs, but I've made them CN instead of evil, and integrated them into the game world a bit more to make them allowable). Part of being a DM is saying no.

 

[childeroland]

I still love a good fantasy flick (even though the majority aren't done very well) and with the news that christopher Tolkien may block future middle earth movies I wonder what would be a great replacement for that epic action kind of movie.

To be fair, although I love middle earth it was written for a time almost a hundred years ago but a guy with a pretty colonial mindset so I would love to see more diverse casts like skyrim or dragon age had

Game of Thrones, which pretty much fills the void now.

But it'd be great to see Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Gormenghast done right, for movies maybe The Never Ending Story or a .hack film. Yes to Berserk. I usually oppose the idea of live action anime adaptations, but Twelve Kingdoms done right would be fantastic. Same with, well, Fantastic Children or Escaflowne.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

I hate to say it, but perhaps Warcraft?

I mean... I can't stand WoW. But it seems like the first film will be based on the older games (Warcraft and Warcraft II). And that's pretty cool.

 

[Donut]

Can't they do original stories with these characters ? Why does everything gotta be an adaptation ?

 

[Shikamaru]

One big hell yeah to Berzerk!

And speaking of anime, I always thought a Gurren Lagann film trilogy can potentially have the same impact trilogy like Star Wars and LotR. I fully mean that, for multiple reasons.

1) It has the same grandiose epic-in-scale tone and storytelling that those other franchises do, even mixing some of the best of Star Wars with some of the best of Star Trek like Abrams tried to do but didn't work out so well (IMO).

2) It is one of the most optimistic stories in all of anime, despite its dystopian settings, and has one of the best executions of its themes. The whole "never give up fighting for your dreams" is a message that's been done to death, but Gurren Lagann does it in such a unique new way. That's as far as I'll go without mentioning spoilers.

3) I genuinely think it's one of the greatest underdog stories ever told, and the best one I'll ever read. Again, I can't explain what I mean by that without spoiling a big twist, but it does one thing I haven't seen any other underdog story do: it makes you, initially, have the same opinion of the protagonist that the characters in the setting do. Whereas in most other stories, even in cases where viewers find the protagonist unlikeable, the viewer is still aware the protagonist will achieve greatness by the end because the story dictates so.

Also, most of its soundtrack already sounds very cinematic, with arguably a few tweeks here and there. Here's just one of the OST's:
[YT]iDsEIXvdWdk[/YT]

 

[Curmudgeon]

4th'd. But WoT really needs to be a TV/Netflix series. It's way to long for film.

For comparison, all 3 LotR books together are 473,000 words. Book1 of WoT is 305,000 words, and there's 14 books.

Even cutting a lot you'd end up with 9 or 10 long films worth of material.

Would it be too expensive for tv though? Also, I'd like to know how many of those 305,000 words were used for describing people's outfits. I swear every coat, dress, and piece of armor in that series was described down to the finest detail.