With the film and TV rights to the Silmarillion still officially off-limits (at least as far as we know), Amazon studios and Warner Bros. have two choices for developing a new Middle-earth story: first, they could create original stories, or second, they can expand on material found in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King. I think the second option is by far the most likely, since mining the appendices for stories will simultaneously appeal to long-time Tolkien fans and save time and money compared to developing new stories from scratch. Die-hard fans of Lord of the Rings are no doubt familiar with the material in the Appendices, but newer fans (especially those that were introduced to the stories through the movies) might not be as familiar with the stories and histories JRR Tolkien included in at the end of the trilogy. Because of this, I thought it would be a good time to review the stories in the Appendices in a series of blog posts, and talk about how Amazon Studies might adapt the tales for their TV series. Jump past the break to read the first post in this series, which will review the history behind the Appendices and give a brief overview of their contents.
