Amazon is Producing a New Lord of the Rings Show

It's official folks . . . and much sooner than I expected. Amazon is producing a Lord of the Rings television show in cooperation with everyone and the kitchen sink (I'm serious, it's a long list: Warner Bros. Entertainment, New Line Cinema, HarperCollins, Middle-Earth Enterprises, and The Tolkien Estate and Trust. Jump past the break to get the full story, and my initial thoughts on this exciting development.

First, a brief recap for any of you who are hearing about this for the first time. On November 3rd, Variety posted a story stating that Amazon was in talks with Warner Bros. Entertainment (and all the other interested parties) to produce a new Lord of the Rings TV series. This first story was quickly followed by additional articles by the good folks over at TheOneRing.Net (see here and here) sharing the news and reviewing the complicated legal history of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie rights. The legal stuff doesn't excite me all that much, so I'll summarize it like this: the rights for these films have changed hands a lot, and there is bad blood between some of the interested parties (I'm looking at you guys, New Line and the Tolkien Estate).

A week has now passed, and now The Hollywood Reporter has broke a story officially confirming the rumor. Amazon will indeed be making a Lord of the Rings series. Wow.

So what does this all mean? Well, I guess my own thoughts can be best summarized by three questions (roughly in order of importance):

1. What stories is Amazon going to tell?

Since the story first broke on Variety, people have been speculating wildly about what Middle-earth stories an Amazon TV series would tell. The way I saw it, there are really only four options:

1. A re-telling of Lord of the Rings
2. Stories related to Lord of the Rings, hinted at by Tolkien in Appendices or elsewhere
3. Original stories related to Lord of the Rings
4. Stores set prior to Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit (aka, the Silmarillion)

I'm going to rule out option 1 right away. I think that there are too many fans of the original Lord of the Rings films, and that the films are still a large enough cultural force 15 years after their release, for Amazon to view a remake as anything but a risky bet. Additionally, I doubt that the other involved parties (New Line, Warner Bros., the Tolkien Estate) would want to put the royalties they are no doubt still raking in from the original films at risk by creating a new "replacement" film or TV series.

But what about options 2, 3, and 4? The Hollywood Reported story has this to say:

Amazon's LOTR series will be set in Middle-earth and explore new storylines preceding Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. The deal includes a potential additional spinoff series.

Preceding the Fellowship of the Ring, huh? Well, that doesn't really rule out any of the above options, but I think it does suggest to things. First, whatever story they are planning on telling is most likely directly related to the events of Lord of the Rings, other wise why stress that it takes place before Fellowship of the Ring? If we were going to see events from the Silmarillion, they probably would have just said so, because that would be huge news. And there is no mention of this future story's relationship to the events of the Hobbit, making me think it probably takes place much closer in time to Frodo's adventure than to Bilbo's.

Based on this line of reasoning, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this first series will definitely not focus on the Silmarillion (the film rights to that book are still––as far as I'm aware––still held by the Tolkien Estate anyways), though the mention of "potential additional spinoff series" is suggestive to me at least that Amazon is interested in doing parts of the Silmarillion at some future point.

So if I'm right, we're going to get an LOTR-related story. What could it be? I think the it most likely that this new series will focus on Aragorn and his adventures prior to Fellowship of the Ring. I expect we'll see Aragorn's developing relationship with Arwen, his work with Gandalf to protect the Shire, and most likely his efforts to hunt down Gollum. This would make an amazing TV series, so I really hope that I'm right.

2. Who is going to tell this new story?

I've been pondering this question for about a week now, ever since the Variety story first started to circulate. Now that we know that New Line will be involved in the project, I think it is almost guaranteed that Peter Jackson will have some sort of role in developing the story. I doubt that he would direct a TV series (though stranger things have happened . . . looking at you, Hobbit films), but I am certain that he will be tapped either as a producer or writer. This seems especially likely if Amazon has grand ambitions to create a "Middle-earth cinematic universe" in the style of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the Star Wars franchise. Jackson's involvement would also make it highly likely that other familiar faces and organizations would help craft the new story: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and the whole WETA crew. If I'm right and the story will be Aragorn-centric and include the Ranger's long hunt for Gollum, then I think that Andy Serkis' involvement is a virtual certainty.

If Peter Jackson is relegated to a producer or writing role, who would be hired to direct the series? Andy Serkis has extensive experience as a second unit director in the three Hobbit films, so I wouldn't be blown out of the water if he was named as director. Or perhaps Guillermo del Toro would be willing to dip is toes into Middle-earth again since the Hobbit didn't work out for him. I'm sure there are hundreds of options, but since it's outside the range of my geek knowledge, I'll leave that speculation to others.

3. What style will the new story be told in?

Over the past week my friend and I were getting super excited imagining all the ways a new TV series could expand the way we imagine Middle-earth. For example, I think that stop motion animation would be an amazing medium in which to explore Tolkien's world. Have you seen Kubo and the Two Strings? It's visually stunning film (check out the trailer to get a sense of the style). Can you imagine you beautiful a Lord of the Rings story told in that form would be? And beyond just the beauty of the art style, using stop-motion or some other sort of animation would allow the visual appearances of the non-human characters in Middle-earth (Hobbits, dwarves, orcs, etc.) to be pushed just a bit further into the fantastical. Think more rotund hobbits and dwarves with big, potato-shaped noses like you grew up with in the Rankin and Bass Hobbit cartoon. I for one think this would be amazing.

But . . . all of that daydreaming came before I knew New Line would be involved in the project. With New Lines' participation, I suspect the new TV series will have a very similar look and feel to the LOTR and Hobbit films, and a lot of fans will be thrilled by that. And please don't get me wrong. The original films are beautiful and stunning, both in terms of the cinematography and the design work. If the TV series is produced with a similar level of quality and care, I'll be perfectly happy. I just think branching out a bit in terms of the tools used to visualize Middle-earth could be a good thing.

I'll be putting out more content over the coming days and weeks as we continue to get more news and I keep thinking about what this all means. But in the mean time, I'd love to hear from you. Are you excited about this announcement? Angry? Apprehensive? Let me know in the comments below. And if you have any Middle-earth questions, leave a comment and I'll answer it as quickly as I can.

Later.