
Amazon Wants to Turn Lord of the Rings into the Next Game of Thrones - BerislavLopac
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/3/16605272/lord-of-the-rings-jrr-tolkien-game-of-thrones-amazon-studios
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atonse
Although LOTR does have similarities to GoT (lots of characters, vast,
complicated world, lots of languages, etc), how is this even taken seriously,
given the Peter Jackson movies pretty much did justice to the books? (I'm
assuming they did from the fan following. I never read the books)

What value would they even really add?

At least with the Game of Thrones, it was the first time it was adapted to
television.

In the case of LoTR, there's already been a big budget production that won a
ton of Oscars.

This seems very strange to me. Usually these studios want to try new ideas and
less conservative. This smacks of a typical Hollywood studio problem, just
regurgitating existing franchises into new mediums.

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imron
> given the Peter Jackson movies pretty much did justice to the books? (I'm
> assuming they did from the fan following. I never read the books)

They left out the "Scouring of the Shire" which was one of the key chapters of
the book that illustrated the main point of the entire story.

I'm still bitter.

~~~
vkjv
I am right there with you! My favorite part of the books. Although, I can
understand why it was cut. It doesn't work in the context of a movie to have
an epic world encompassing battle followed by a minor skirmish.

I feel like this story would be a good mini-series or standalone movie.

~~~
imron
> My favorite part of the books.

Mine too! I also understand why it was cut, but it really ruined the movies
for me.

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megaman22
I would have said that the Wheel of Time series might be a better idea than
rehashing LOTR so soon, but apparently that is already in the works ->
[https://www.tor.com/2017/04/20/the-wheel-of-time-tv-serie-
so...](https://www.tor.com/2017/04/20/the-wheel-of-time-tv-serie-sony-
pictures-rafe-judkins/)

Another one that might be interesting is Glen Cook's Black Company series, but
that is apparently also taken... [http://deadline.com/2017/04/eliza-dushku-
star-the-black-comp...](http://deadline.com/2017/04/eliza-dushku-star-the-
black-company-series-adaptation-david-goyer-im-global-1202076367/)

~~~
fooey
Wheel of Time TV shows are coming, (again, hopefully)

Kingkiller Chronicles movies and TV shows are coming

Stormlight Archive and Mistborn adaptations are coming

I'm pretty excited for the next few years.

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joejerryronnie
As much as I love The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I don't think I'd like to see
Amazon take this on. In my mind, the Peter Jackson movies (not including the
Hobbit series) were done so well they kind of put the definitive stamp on the
Tolkien epic for me. I guess Amazon could mine some of the extensive Middle
Earth history but there are so many other fantasy and scifi master pieces that
have not been successfully adapted. Dune and Foundation come to mind or, for
more adult fare, something like Kushiel's Legacy. How about bringing China
Mieville's Bas-Lag and New Crobuzon to life on the small screen? I think
Amazon should take a bigger risk than a LOTR retread.

~~~
arethuza
I'd go for either KSR's Mars Trilogy or, ideally, Stephenson's _Baroque Cycle_
\- which has plenty of material and has some great characters. Jack Shaftoe
(AKA King of the Vagabonds, L'Emmerdeur, Half-Cocked Jack, Quicksilver, Ali
Zaybak, Sword of Divine Fire, and Jack the Coiner) is one of my all time
favourite characters.

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IgorPartola
A Harry Potter TV show would be better. The movies didn't do the books
justice, there is enough material there to make it into several seasons, and a
different cast could do well with it too.

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cjensen
There was a lot wrong with Jackson's versions where he thought he knew better
than Tolkien (missing half the endings, representing Sauron as a _literal_
flaming eye in a tower, "fixing" Arwen badly because Tolkien couldn't write a
female character). But it's still a very substantial work, and I don't see how
a miniseries would improve on it.

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scj
I must admit some degree of fantasy fatigue.

The setting I'd want to see for a complex multi-party high-budget drama, is a
fictional world in the age of sail. Conquerors, unlikely allies, traders, and
even pirates.

It could have social commentary around first contact, exploitation, different
belief systems, different social structures, relations with the crown.

And it'd be really ambitious if the cultures involved were somewhat evenly
matched. A bit better technology on one side vs. home field advantage and
numbers on the other. Possibly diseases going in both directions.

~~~
arethuza
"Conquerors, unlikely allies, traders, and even pirates."

I know I'm repeating myself - but the _Baroque Cycle_ gives you all of that
_and_ Isaac Newton in top form...

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dageshi
I'm waiting for Midsomer Murders set in Ankh Morpork with Vimes solving weird
murders.

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Shivetya
There are definitely a good number of fantasy series that could be adapted to
television. just like GOT the vast majority of them aren't household names.
GOT certainly wasn't until it became popular on HBO.

LOTR, is there even enough content in the three books for a multiple season
show? deviation becomes very difficult because the stories are widely known
and all sorts of cliques exist around what is what. While the LOTR movies did
good work with the books there is always the danger for Amazon that we would
end up with a LOTR meeting a Hobbit style treatment so that it moves so far
from the books that fans of the source material tune it out.

rehash, the fact they want to use a known story such as LOTR shows they are
concerned only about money and not a good show. They are approaching it from
the wrong angle

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qwerty_asdf
What a terrible idea.

The ~15 year-old trilogy remains awesome, and needs no competitor. This is
just going to needlessly mutate a familiar and well-received thing.

If Amazon wants to do something new, then Amazon should do something new under
a different name, and not co-opt brand recognition for a cheap bonus.

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perpetualcrayon
IMO instead of trying to find the "unicorn" they should be working toward
perfecting a process through which they can bring in a lot of inexperienced /
passionate / relatively low cost teams and support them with a small core
group of highly skilled / experienced people in the industry.

It's all about the story. A high budget film with a mediocre story will still
only be mediocre. A low budget film with an amazing story will more than
likely still be amazing.

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kabdib
Sounds awful.

On the other hand, I'd love to see Ken Burns do _The Silmarillion_, a-la his
treatment of _The Civil War_. It'd cut down on production costs, too :-)

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bg4
I'd be on board if it was based on the Silmarillion. We don't need more LoTR
content at this time, imho.

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CharlesW
I'm a bit _Lord_ -ed out. A _Bored of the Rings_ [1] adaptation could be fun,
though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings)

~~~
megaman22
This was, in many ways, what Futurama: Bender's Game was.

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debacle
Slightly off tangent, but how is Man in the High Castle both in terms of
quality and trueness to the source material? I feel like the book would have
made a great miniseries, but it didn't seem long enough to turn into a multi-
series show.

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brandoncordell
I'm not sure if I like the idea of this adaptation and I'm wonder if Amazon
will give this a big enough budget to make an epic like GoT.

If anything, I'd love to see The Silmarillion turned into a series. I think it
lends itself better to bursts of short epic episodes and the stories are
largely untold outside of the book.

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luckroy
Dragonlance offers much depth in its world and mythology, although its use of
traditional high fantasy tropes may come off as cliche and make it
unappealing.

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omalleyt
I'm really hoping they actually mean an adaption of some period from The
Simarillion. Maybe Feanor's story? Something like that would be epic

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aaron695
I did laugh that it was MTV that did The Shannara Chronicles, everyone is
jumping on board GoT. They did an ok job for a series, nothing heavy though
and I don't think accurate to the books.

But why you would ever redo the LoTR novels is beyond me. They are done by the
movies... end scene.

Adding new material doesn't seem to me to be something the fans would allow.

I don't get how this idea ever got floated, as per South park a few weeks ago,
Amazon are trying to Greenlite everything now?

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jp57
What a fucking terrible idea. They have completely missed the point of what
makes Game of Thrones so popular.

GoT is about the victory of the historically downtrodden--women, eunuchs,
slaves, "wildlings", bastards, and a dwarf--over the traditionally powerful
men. GoT is full of sex and death. And, best of all, was totally
unpredictable. (For the first six seasons, anyway)

LotR, on the other hand, is about the victory of a bunch of white males going
to war against a multiracial army. Their goal: to help a white man from a
"superior" race (the Numenoreans) reclaim his birthright: dominion over almost
all of middle earth. The only two women in the books with any substantive role
are Galadriel and Eowyn. Galadriel is in a no-win situation; most of her power
is destroyed when the One Ring is destroyed. Meanwhile Eowyn, the scrappy
shieldmaiden of Rohan, is rewarded for killing the Captain of the Nazgul by
getting to assume a gender-normal role as the wife of the Steward of Gondor.
(HT to David Brin for pointing a lot of this out first.)

Worst of all for the TV series, in LotR everyone already knows what's going to
happen!

~~~
saint_fiasco
LotR is about how the wisest and the strongest barely manage to survive while
the weak save the world.

In the books, Gandalf states that expliitly: “Many are the strange chances of
the world,' said Mithrandir, 'and help oft shall come from the hands of the
weak when the Wise falter.”

In the movies, they even have the King of Gondor kneeling before the hobbits,
just to drive the point home. It's hardly subtle.

