In case anyone was curious:<p>> television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring<p>So it's not going to tell the main story itself, which is probably wise given the film adaptations aren't even that old.<p>Maybe it's just me I'm not super-excited by this news. I wish there were more original universes being created with the insane amount of TV money swirling around these days. This just feels like a very safe "me too Game of Thrones" play.
This <i>could</i> be both quite good and original.<p>LotR takes place at the end of the Third Age and Tolkien expanded that into the three novels, but he also wrote (and his son co-wrote, edited and published) The Silmarillion, which covered everything until the end of the Third Age.<p>I always thought The Silmarillion contained enough source material to make a dozen "LotR"s and keep everything consistent within the same universe. I hope that do that instead of a "Young Aragorn" type of deal.
It's good to know that Amazon are right behind creative, contemporary ideas and not simply cynically retreading ground that has been covered already.
Now I get to go back to my friends and say: "Remember when I told you that they would create a film adaptation of the Sylmarillion and Appendices, in 8 installments, and you all rolled your eyes at me?"
If there is any author who has fleshed out their world enough to have an entire TV series focus on minor characters it's Tolkien.<p>Personally, if they include Tom Bombadil in the show it will be entirely worth it for me.
A lot of people seem to be down on it, but I'm pretty excited. He's still the standard to which any fantasy book is held to, as well as the standard for worldbuilding. Nothing else really comes close.
I have successfully avoided Prime up to now. This might be the tipping point.<p>OTOH, despite creative quibbles it's hard to imagine surpassing the film versions, so maybe I can just watch those a few more times.
There are so many amazing fantasy novels that need movies or TV shows. Tolkien was good, and for his time, amazing. But compared to what we have available today, I wouldn't even put him in the top 10.<p>sigh
I really hope when they say "preceding The Fellowship of the Ring" they still mean Third Age. The Silmarillion stuff is just too big and too unfamiliar IMO. There's plenty to cover with Dol Guldur, Gollum's capture and escape, Moria, Gandalf and Saruman, Wormtongue, Denethor, Aragorn as a younger man, etc. Going further back but still Third Age you have the breakup of Arnor and the rise of Angmar, the founding of the Shire and Rohan, dwarves and dragons, and so on. There's just no need to go all the way back to the beginning, and it would seem too much like a whole different world that I think it would be a mistake.
So hold on, this is literally working with the Tolkien Estate? Is the Estate licensing further works? I assumed before now that the articles referencing the "Tolkien Estate" mostly didn't know what they were talking about, and that the deal was being worked out with the usual suspects (i.e. Saul Zaentz Company) with the Estate keeping up their same position. This makes it more interesting, I guess.
I wish someone would do a proper job on the Earthsea novels. Netflix, are you listening?<p>LOTR is a bit played out, the Hobbitrilogy kinda beat it to death.
Dupe of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15643856" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15643856</a>