Saw the final Hobbit trilogy piece “Battle of the Five Armies” with my kid the other night. It was OK but IMO it was more cartoonish than classic by the end.
So anyway…now that Tolkien’s works have been done is Hollywood done with the LOTR universe for a while? It is/was a huge cash engine but supposedly the Tolkien estate was not thrilled with the movies.
Any more play there for Hollywood and the LOTR universe?
What, I thought Peter Jackson would do The Silmarillion next (or well, the rest of it)?
He’ll do the Sil over Chris Tolkien’s dead body. Literally. Chris is the executor of the Estate, and he has been vocally LIVID over the portrayal of his dad’s work by the Jackson crew. He considers them greedy artless moneygrubbing hacks. Now that the Hobbit was bloated all out of proportion, he doesn’t seem quite so much the frothing lunatic, but that aside, he wasn’t happy to begin with that there were going to be ‘commercial’ vesions of the books. I believe he said once he’d have wanted to see a BBC scholarly version done, like the Hollow Crown series or something even smaller.
Anyway, there’s absolutely no money or leverage on this earth that will convince him to let anyone at the Sil now.
Perhaps after he passes the Estate will reconsider- I think some of the legends in the Sil would make for very good drama, and it would be good as a mini-series or linked set of shorter videos.
As I understand it, Christopher Tolkien owns the film rights to the Silmarilion and absolutely refuses to sell them because he dislikes what Jackson &co. have done with the LOTR/Hobbit franchises.
However, when and if he dies, the rights will descend unto his son Simon, who is a fan of the movies.
So the best probable answer is “Maybe, but not anytime soon, and I wouldn’t expect to see any of the major actors reprise their roles when it happens”.
The family has the rights, and would not give them up for a trillion dollars at least as long as Christopher is alive.
I suppose some movies based on the appendices is possible. I don’t see much commercial interest in vowel shifts.
Brian
I would assume there’s wiggle-room for a number of derivative works pertaining to the Trilogy, let’s say maybe about the Rangers of the North (Incidentally the subject of Middle-Earth:Shadow of Mordor, which I believe was licensed through Warner Bros.).
God, I hope not.
Christopher Tolkien is kind of a nut about the sanctity of the Professor’s work. Don’t mistake me…I revere Tolkien’s body of work myself, but I revere it as pieces of literature. Sometimes Christopher’s attitude looks a lot like seriously pretentious idol-wankery. The only literary work that’s actually sacred is the Scriptures of various religions, and even that pretty much depends on how you’re approaching them. Tolkienalia (Tolkeniana?) is wonderful and inspiring and entertaining, but it’s not a religion…
Christopher Tolkien’s reverence for his father’s work has never prevented him from collecting, working over & publishing every word JRRT rejected…
Does anyone actually think a adaptation of the Silmarilion would even be watchable? In order to get it to such a state, Jackson would have to do a hell of a lot more mucking about than he did with the others. Probably be better off to just do a Tom Bombadil movie.
How about thinking out of the box a little bit? The next Tolkien movie (once Christopher Tolkien has passed) will be due to Hollywood desperation for a new property for Christmas. So, coming in the near future, releasing on a Thanksgiving Day, will be The Father Christmas Letters.
So … he’s effectively a semi-omnipotent God in his little pocket universe. Outline the plot dynamic re what you see as a workable story script for Tom Bombadil.
I don’t know who this Christopher Tolkien is but if he hates what Jackson has wrought, then I think I want to have his babies.
He’s Adam Sandler’s publicist.
Farmer Giles of Ham: The Trilogy!
He could always do the Scouring of the Shire. Or Balin’s ill-fated attempt to retake Moria. But I hope not.
If Jackson were going to do anything else from the Silmarillion–and I wouldn’t really want to see that, based on five out of his last six movies–I’d want it to be the tale of Turin. If he could be persuaded to approach it as the serious tragedy it so essentially is, it might work.
I could see a re-edit of the Hobbit trilogy coming eventually, either stitching them into one long-ish epic with judicious editing to make it bearable in length, or (heaven forbid) extended editions like what they did for LotR. Especially possible if this last film comes close to some financial goal without quite reaching it (say, $900 million worldwide box office); an altered rerelease would allow the film to cross $1 billion and get some bragging rights. Then again, I was kind of surprised this didn’t happen for the last movie, which was really close to that milestone but petered out at $958 million.
The problem with making a Silmarillion movie (besides the legal ones) is the focus is more on the larger stories, large chunks pass with few words (narrative jumps ahead a lot), and there aren’t too many “play by plays”, so you’d have to make a ton of dialogue and scenes up that aren’t well described in the book. Putting it together as “episodic” doesn’t help. There are scenes that would make great movie moments, such as Turin’s battles with Glaumdring, Beren and Luthien stealing Morgoth’s crown, and what’s his name that killed the Grandaddy Balrog. But I think the story is too fractured and disjointed to make a coherent movie, although it’s a great book if you can keep track of the characters. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
I think eventually someone else will take a crack at LOTR, but it won’t be until long after Christopher passes. It would be interesting to see someone else’s take on it, if it’s made within my lifetime.
Well Christopher Tolkien is already 90 years old. I don’t think waiting him out would take too long.