Amazon's Rings of Power - General Discussion Thread (SPOILERS)

[Marvolo]

this will probally be tv reboot of lord of the rings/the hobbit.although this may be more amazon's game of thrones without all the sex lol

Hairy footed hobbit sex or no deal.

 

[Roose Bolton]

We have to see how Saruman bred Orcs and Goblin men!


But that does remind me, even though I'd prefer them to work with the estate to adapt other stories outside LOTR/Hobbit, I'd be intrigued to see the Scouring of the Shire play out.

 

[Gabe99]

Deadline November 3, 2017:
‘Lord Of The Rings’ TV Series Shopped With Huge Rights Payment Attached

In a deal that is expected to dwarf any TV series to date, I hear the J.R.R. Tolkien estate has been shopping a possible series based on the late author’s The Lord of the Rings novels with a whopping price tag attached.

I hear Amazon, Netflix and HBO had been approached about the project, which comes with an upfront rights payment said to be in the $200 – $250 million range. That is just for the rights, before any costs for development, talent and production. It is a payment that has to be made sight unseen as there is no concept, and there are no creative auspices attached to the possible series. (I hear the pitch at HBO involved producer Jane Tranter whose company is partially owned by HBO and Sky but the general package has no talent attached.) On top of that, the budget for a fantasy series of that magnitude is likely to be $100-$150 a season.

I hear that Amazon and Netflix are still in the running while HBO, home of blockbuster fantasy series Game Of Thrones, passed awhile back because of the the finances of the deal that many industry observes call “insane.” Additionally, industry sources note that there are already three great Lord Of the Rings movies and a total of six movies in the world made, along with the Hobbit films. Plus, I hear that the rights for a TV series in the Lord of the Rights do not encompass all characters and are limited.

Given Amazon’s mandate to launch a big fantasy series of the scope of Game Of Thrones, which comes directly from honcho Jeff Bezos, and Amazon’s deep coffers, the company is considered a leading contender for a Lord Of the Rings series. (For context, the price tag for the rights to Lord Of the Rings is what Bezos payed for Washington Post.) Bezos has been hands-on involved in the matters of entertainment division Amazon Studios following the purge of its top executives, led by Roy Price, and has been taking meetings and making calls to agents over the past two weeks. Amazon’s talks for a Lord of the Rings TV series were first reported by Variety.

The Lord of the Rings deal would dwarf some big-ticket series commitments Amazon has made over the last couple of years — $80 million for the six-episode Woody Allen show Crisis in Six Scenes, $70+ million for Matt Weiner’s eight-episode The Romanoffs, and $160 for two seasons of David O. Russell’s series, which now has been axed after about $40 million spent. (The last two series originally came from The Weinstein Co., which no longer has involvement in The Romanoffs)

The possible Lord of the Rings TV series is done in conjunction with Warner Bros. TV, whose film studio counterpart produced the feature trilogy in the 2000s. The TV studio would not comment on the talks, which are preliminary.

The TV series pitch comes on the heels of Warner Bros. and the Tolkien estate in July settling an $80 million rights dispute over The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings after a grueling five-year court battle.

The Tolkien estate and publisher HarperCollins filed the massive lawsuit in November 2012 against Warner Bros., its subsidiary New Line and Middle-earth Enterprises — a division of Rings’ Hobbit rightsholder the Saul Zaentz Co. — claiming copyright infringement and breach of contract over video games, online slot machines and other digital merchandising.

Launched at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy was a global phenomenon. Starring Elijah Wood, In McKellen, Liv Tyler, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom and others, the three films combined to gross more than $2.9 billion worldwide. LOTR: The Two Towers was released in 2002, and The Return of the King arrived the following year, becoming only the second film to top $1 billion worldwide. That third installment won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay. The previous two combined to win six Academy Awards in crafts categories.

Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.

 

[Fincher]

That makes it sound like maybe this isn't an adaptation of the trilogy, unless Amazon is buying a series with no concept with the intent to make it a direct adaptation.

 

[regwec]

Delighted to hear about this, particularly after PJ utterly ruined The Hobbit. Of course a lot could go wrong: the cast for PJ's trilogy was hit and miss, but some of the performances were brilliant. More risky, however, is the capture of the right tone. The temptation for any screen writer will be to work in more love and, inevitably, sex, but I think it's very difficult to do achieve this without shattering the tone. I think the right approach to both LOTR and The Hobbit is to treat them as children's fiction that is quite grown up, rather than adult fiction that is immature.

As to what could be done differently: there are a 1,001 little departures from the books that PJ made, each of which would give a more faithful adaptation a different feel. From the old Hobbit thread, here are just a few:

- Hobbits older and stouter.
- Aragorn unbearded due to his Elven ancestry, and never without his broken sword.
- Gimli hooded and unarmoured.
- Legolas dark haired.
- Nazgul silent, creeping and ghostly; rather than notably heavy and armoured.
- Orcs with both black and sallow skin, with burning red eyes, armed with scimitars (as opposed to those cleaver things).
- Uruk Hai with short, Romanesque, stabbing swords.
- "Saruman of Many Colours".
- A less bestial and more diabolic Balrog (i.e. a wingless humanoid).
- The Warg attack at the foot of Caradhras.
- More mannish and less treeish Ents.
- The goodness of Elves represented by something other than white light.
- Rivendell as a mansion rather than a woodland adventure complex.
- Sauron as a subtler, more Satanic and less Morgoth-like creature.
- A flashback of Gollum's interrogation in which we see (some of) Sauron's physical presence.
- Boromir transfixed to a tree by arrows loosed by dozens of Uruk Hai.
- A Mouth of Sauron more like a dark Aragorn than a "monster" as such.
- The attack on the Prancing Pony carried out by the Nazgul's agents rather than themselves (implied in the book).
- Gandalf's fight against the Nazgul on Weathertop.
- The Black Breath.
- Gondor as a rich realm, not just Minas Tirith on a barren heath.
- Gondor's soldiers wearing classical rather than late medieval armour.
- The Dead Men of Dunharrow as more subtle and more physical beings, fighting like the skeletons of "Jason and the Argonauts" rather than a Ghostbusters spirit swarm.

McKellen will be hard as hell to replace, though. I do not envy that task.

Timothy Dalton.

They will never ever be able to compete with the cast of the movies. Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Christopher Lee as Saruman, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Bernard Hill as Theoden amongst others... these actors were born to play these roles, and I can't help but feel that it would hurt my heart a little to see lesser actors try and represent such iconic characters.

She was awful, as were most of the Elves. I will never understand why PJ interpreted the musical voices and lightness of the Elves as "motionless botox-face with dead eyes and a sententious monotone voice".

Deadline November 3, 2017:
‘Lord Of The Rings’ TV Series Shopped With Huge Rights Payment Attached

Looks like something will happen, then.

 

[Dark Raven]

What's this series going to be about? Are they going to cover the same material as the films, except taking much longer about it and going into more depth? I watched all 6 films (extended versions) recently, split into about an hour at a time over several weeks, otherwise it would be too much to watch even one film in one go. That ended up much like a season of a TV show.

 

[Bruce Malone]

Game of Thrones in its first couple seasons got some criticism for not having LoTR sized battles or visuals.

I can only imagine the comparisons this show will get if it doesn't have a big budget from the get-go.

Amazon needs to go big or go home with this.

 

[Pennywise]

Going to be difficult to imagine anyone aside from Serkis as Gollum.

Will be interesting to see how big the budget would be.

 

[regnak]

Delighted to hear about this, particularly after PJ utterly ruined The Hobbit. Of course a lot could go wrong: the cast for PJ's trilogy was hit and miss, but some of the performances were brilliant. More risky, however, is the capture of the right tone. The temptation for any screen writer will be to work in more love and, inevitably, sex, but I think it's very difficult to do achieve this without shattering the tone. I think the right approach to both LOTR and The Hobbit is to treat them as children's fiction that is quite grown up, rather than adult fiction that is immature.

As to what could be done differently: there are a 1,001 little departures from the books that PJ made, each of which would give a more faithful adaptation a different feel. From the old Hobbit thread, here are just a few:



Timothy Dalton.



She was awful, as were most of the Elves. I will never understand why PJ interpreted the musical voices and lightness of the Elves as "motionless botox-face with dead eyes and a sententious monotone voice".



Looks like something will happen, then.

If anything I would expect a TV adaptation to be less faithful. For starters a faithful one would have no women or minorities as part of the regular cast. That just won't fly in this day and age.

 

[Loden Greatstorm]

Heck to the YES on this!

Only question, how would it work? Would the first season be the FOTR, second season be TTT? Seems logical to me.

I’m so pumped for the potential.

 

[Abudefduf]

If anything I would expect a TV adaptation to be less faithful. For starters a faithful one would have no women or minorities as part of the regular cast. That just won't fly in this day and age.

Oh gawd... this is gonna be a nightmare, isn't it. Let's hope someone kills this project before it's too late.

Also I find it very, very hard to believe that the Tolkien Estate is selling "rights" to anything, it really doesn't sound like something that they would do.

 

[regwec]

They don't need to sell any rights because JRR did it in the 1960s.

 

[Abudefduf]

Well yeah, I know that; I was in a hurry and I used the wrong word, that's why I put it between quotation marks. What they're actually doing (according to the article, at least) is this:

In a deal that is expected to dwarf any TV series to date, I hear the J.R.R. Tolkien estate has been shopping a possible series based on the late author’s The Lord of the Rings novels with a whopping price tag attached.

Now, I'm not sure what that means but, again, knowing the Estate's stance on adaptations of Tolkien's works, it just seems very hard to believe to me. It's hard to believe that they'd want to be involved with this project at all.

 

[Schlosser85]

Ugh. The movies are untouchable.

 

[TheVileOne]

FYI, they could take this in a completely different direction and adapt stories from other parts of Middle-Earth.

 

[TheVileOne]

Well yeah, I know that; I was in a hurry and I used the wrong word, that's why I put it between quotation marks. What they're actually doing (according to the article, at least) is this:



Now, I'm not sure what that means but, again, knowing the Estate's stance on adaptations of Tolkien's works, it just seems very hard to believe to me. It's hard to believe that they'd want to be involved with this project at all.

That's the weirdest part of this whole story to me. They were very repulsed by both LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit films. I don't get why they'd suddenly change their minds about Hollywood adaptations now.

 

[Finarfiniel]

She was awful, as were most of the Elves. I will never understand why PJ interpreted the musical voices and lightness of the Elves as "motionless botox-face with dead eyes and a sententious monotone voice".

As someone who counts Galadriel as being their favourite literary character of all time, to say that I disagree with you here would be the understatement of the century, so I'll just leave it there.

If anything I would expect a TV adaptation to be less faithful. For starters a faithful one would have no women or minorities as part of the regular cast. That just won't fly in this day and age.

Oh gawd... this is gonna be a nightmare, isn't it. Let's hope someone kills this project before it's too late.

Yep, to think that is somehow going to be a more accurate adaption than the movies in the day and age that we're living in is pure naivety. Look what WB did to The Hobbit for starters, adding in a new female character that doesn't exist in the source material purely just to have a female character and not only that, then forcing Jackson's hand to throw in a completely unnecessary and cringe inducing love triangle. Now think of what they might try to do to a new LotR adaption.

Having had more time to think about, I pray this never gets off the ground.

 

[InvisibleWoman]

All the LOTR movies were shown on UK television over the past few weekends and they still hold up after 16 years. I just don't see the point in remaking it at this point. It will always be compared to something of such high quality...

 

[Grootster]

Aside from a few odd choices here and there (mostly in Return of the King), Peter Jackson's trilogy is pretty spot on. They're pretty faithful movies in terms of honoring the source material, especially in comparison to other adaptations of classic novels. I honestly have a hard time imagining a remake (TV or film) doing it better.

My guess is that this show will be a very different interpretation that won't necessarily stick to the story of the book. I could see doing that (it might even work if it's clever), but it's too soon, they need to give it a couple more decades at least.

If you're going to remake something, remake The Hobbit, they completely screwed up that movie. I'd prefer it be remade as a single movie though., not a TV show.

 

[InvisibleWoman]

I can't help but think they're just looking for something to fill the gap when Game of Thrones ends. People are going to be looking for another fantasy epic and what better way than to remake LOTR. It's all about the money at the end of the day.

 

[Doctor Jones]

If anything do The Hobbit. I have no problem with them re-doing those since they're not good movies. That way, if they succeed, you can go into LOTR where the world is established and we're more comfortable with it all and more trustworthy. But going right into LOTR? It's not a good idea.

A TV series is a way to offset expectations and is the right way to go if you're going to do it again. But it's too soon. Give it some goddamn time. Though I think this won't be for a long, long time. I feel almost like television is becoming an excuse to just remake things or have a viable property. Such is the double edged sword of this golden age of tv. But I think there's more going against this idea than just the timing of it.

I'm confident still that despite it being a tv show, does not necessarily mean it will be better, or it will be more faithful. And those two aren't mutually exclusive. I just don't know a whole new enterprise will be worth it just to show something that looks better by mere preference, Tom Bombadil and the Scourging of the Shire, or all things that made sense to cut within the film and honestly, just to cut from the story. These aren't things that make or break a story. And these are things that aren't even a guarantee of even happening. Basically, for those expecting their proper adaptation of LOTR, you're most likely not going to get it. Everybody has one in their heads, and it's never going to check off all those boxes. Because with something like this, there's always going to be things that aren't included in that will annoy people. Even GOT, for their ten episodes, still can't fit everything from the books, and don't reach up to snuff for the most part. The LOTR films are classics and the best in their genre. This is dangerous territory to walk and will be extremely difficult. The world is not asking for a LOTR TV series when they have the movies. It's like making a Spider-Man origin movies ten years after the last movie did it just fine. Nobody is asking for it. I think people are pretty satisfied with them. With LOTR, that's an epic trilogy that's so ingrained into pop culture in terms of how you do fantasy, it's even more sacred. Why do it again? I'm not saying this is impossible, it's just there's more going against it, even if there's more time separating the two. Honestly, the LOTR films are so good, you can afford to complain about the smaller things that aren't there. In the grand scheme of things, Jackson an co. got it as close as they could for a film in terms of understanding the material and its fundamentals in getting it right. If they didn't, we wouldn't here talking about this. Making a design look different or closer to the book isn't going to make something better or make it all worth it.

But yeah guys... I get there's some major Tolkien fans on here, but separate that from what the movies did and really have the perspective of that those movies were lightening in a bottle, and what they captured could only have been done at that particular time and place. All the elements coming together the way they did. You cannot replicate that again. Again, television offsets that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a major uphill battle. The LOTR films aren't just great movies, they're achievements in art. I dare Amazon to find a showrunner to match Jackson's directing and finding directors to match that. I dare Amazon to find a composer like Howard Shore to compose that incredible soundtrack and compete with that opening theme that gives chills. I dare the director to matching or topping the Helms Deep battle scene to Andy Serkis's casting of Gollum which was revolutionary. I dare them to match or top the climax of LOTR when Sam carries Frodo up Mt. Doom. I dare Amazon to find a mixture of crew that worked so incredibly hard and passionately. I have never seen anything like LOTR since. Not just as films, but in the craft of how you make an enterprise that contributes to making that great film and art in general.

Guys. Do not take this lightly. These aren't just things you can pump out and re-do because, "Oh, they didn't do this before, so we'll just do that!" It goes much, much deeper than that.

 

[TheVileOne]

Why not do other tales of Middle-Earth or the Simarillion? I'd like to see things like Sauron, Morgoth, in their heyday. Rather than remaking the Lord of the Rings trilogy of books for TV.

 

[Silvermoth]

Please don't set it in present day New York or something lol.

Why do lord of the rings though? We already have that. Now the Silmarillion, that would be amazing!

 

[2kt09]

Why do lord of the rings though? We already have that. Now the Silmarillion, that would be amazing!

Because Game of Thrones is coming to an end.
That's what filled the void of Middle Earth content.

 

[Doctor Jones]

So do Wheel of Time or The Kingkiller Chronicles.

Don't do the ****ing The Lord of the Rings when it's already been done.