Absolutely. How in the heck could you turn the Silmarrillion into a movie with a coherent plot? The amount of background exposition necessary makes the “backfilling” at the beginning of FOTR:LOTR look like a brief snapshot…
A friend and I were discussing that just the other day and thought that a kick-ass way to do the Silmarillion would be as a series of animated shorts a la the Animatrix. I want my animated Last Alliance, dammit!
Suzene
You guys crack me up. George Lucas has made entire movies based on less material than one of JRRT’s poems. You could make 50 full length movies out of the material in the Silmarillion and have material to spare.
You could easily do three movies just on Beren and Luthien. Of course, you’d have to write much more of the dialogue than in FOTR and fill out the details of the plots a bit but that would make the films easier to do since everyone would have less preconceptions.
If you buy the tickets, they will come. Christopher Tolkien is getting old. Once he goes, there will be film rights galore.
Truth Seeker writes:
> Christopher Tolkien is getting old. Once he goes, there will be
> film rights galore.
Go back and read the thread from the beginning. The Tolkien family doesn’t control the film rights. Saul Zaentz controls them. And he will probably continue his present strategy for as long as he’s alive, which apparently is to authorize the making of a new film every twenty years or so. He doesn’t want to allow too many versions of Tolkien’s works, since he considers that it would overwhelm the public with clutter and ultimately reduce the amount of money he would make.
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Qadgop, I just had to tell you that I downloaded that wav file and it loaded itself onto my MusicMatch Jukebox. When the Quenya speech stopped, the first song on the jukebox started, and it was Drivin’ and Cryin’s Going Straight To Hell! I thought it was part of your wav file until I checked my song list. Damn, what a great segue!
Q
Tell me that you don’t get those urges whenever you see Rosie Cotton. Hmm? Still silent? I thought so. 
I’m not sure about a new version of The Hobbit. There is something appealing about the idea, but I’m afraid of the consequences of actually producing one.
In my mind, and I’m sure there will be those who disagree, The Hobbit must be in a different style than LotR. I might even go so far as to deliberately cast different actors. I’d change all sorts of things about the production so that it looked really different.
Again, I’m sure some people would disagree, but I think the beauty of The Hobbit is very much different from the beauty of LotR. The feel of the story, the meaning of the events, the way the different races acted and looked was quite different. I think it is an injustice to both books to tie them too closely to each other. Certainly they are part of the same story, but they are also in different worlds. The Hobbit is told from an entirely different perspective from that in the LotR.
For me it would be important not to make The Hobbit simply a prequel for the Lord of the Rings. I would like to see a noticeably different feel in their visual styles as well as other differences. And I’m not sure this would work very well in the context of a movie, but I’d rather not have a film version if it can’t successfully pull it off.
Just my two cents.
Go back and read my post from the beginning. Zaentz owns the rights to LOTR and The Hobbit. He doesn’t own the rights to The Silmarillion. In fact, Christopher Tolkien owns most of the rights to The Silmarilion since, in addition to being one of Tolkien’s heirs, he edited it. He doesn’t like movie adaptations of JRRT’s work but his heirs will likely opt for the megabucks. I know this is Cafe Society, but what the heck, here’s a cite.
The same thing happened to Dr. Suess. He was very uncomfortable with merchandising his work. His heirs – specifically his widow – have no such qualms and are marketing on-Broadway musicals, toys, disposable diapers and the extremely popular “Hop on Pop” line of condoms.
Once ROTK has been released, there will be enormous pressure for a new Tolkien project. Zaentz may feel like it would be a good idea to wait twenty years for a big-budget version of The Hobbit. If so, he’s an idiot. The optimal time to release a new Tolkien film is Christmas 2005 or 2006 when you can still feel the buzz. Twenty years from now, hollywood will be looking at doing a re-make of LOTR.
Assuming ROTK lives up to expectations, there will be no surer blockbuster than a new Tolkien film, even if it’s Leaf by Niggle. Hollywood always responds to the lure of bucks. Whether they make a good film is another question.
O.K., but you could have said that you were referring to The Silmarillion.
In any case, I don’t think that the Peter Jackson films are particularly good. They mess with the story in all sorts of unnecessary ways. I think it’s extremely unlikely that anyone could do an even halfway decent version of The Silmarillion. I don’t even think someone could do a very good version of Leaf by Niggle.