It's present day WB - I'm fully expecting a worse cash grab than the third hobbit film. Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll decide to cancel it for the tax write off.
I'm rewatching the originals now, and it occurred to me that they were made during that magic period when computer graphics were advanced enough to be believable, but still expensive enough to be used sparingly.
By the time the Hobbit movies were made, it was cheaper to make all the orcs into digital props than to hire and costume a bunch of actors, and everything looks like a video game.
> It is an honor and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that stinker — Gollum!
So, a prequel of sorts? Perhaps an expansion on Gollum's origin story?
The only part of this that I can't be cynical about is Andy Serkis still getting paid. Good on him, at least there's one human still working in a creative field.
But I don't think we need more Gollum, that character served his purpose. LOTR (the franchise) seems to be suffering from the same pathologically risk-averse need to keep drawing from the well of the original trilogy as Star Wars. And I'm saying that as someone who actually liked some of the risks the sequel trilogy seemed to want to take with the characters (as much as I hated the execution.) I still would rather have seen something other than yet more chosen bloodline / Palpatine vs Skywalker / Sith vs Jedi stuff. Like Anakin building C3PO it just makes what should be an infinite universe seem small and petty.
If I had a few billion dollars to spare, I'd buy the rights to Tolkien's work.
I'd then spend a bit more collecting all copies of 21st century video versions - and incinerate them in a volcano. I'd end all current licensing deals, pay a team of lawyers, IT staff, and some hackers to destroy every moment of footage on video platforms, in torrents, on obscure FTP sites. I'd pay Peter Jackson to sign an agreement never to discuss Tolkien again.
And then what? I'd find someone with the highest artistic merit, who understood Tolkien's vision of fairy tales and fantasy and mythology. Live action, computer-assisted or not, brings the supernatural Tolkienian settings -- his greatest power as a writer, as vivid today as when I read them: Moria, Lothlorien, Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul, Mordor, Orthanc, Fangorn, the Paths of the Dead, etc. -- to the mundane level of what we can see. The new film(s) would have to be hand-drawn animation, which can imply and leave room for so much more in our imaginations.
But who? Old Pixar, the ones who made Ratatouille and Wall-E, might have been an excellent choice. Miyazaki is much admired; I don't see that style fitting the material, but on the other hand they might have their own vision that, let loose, would set the world on fire. Similarly, the creators of Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse did something uniquely visionary, and possibly could make their own vision of Tolkien.
So to my point: Who? Maybe there's a video game artist? Maybe a different artist for each setting? But whatever we do, it must be art first and formost, without compromise.
> I'd find someone with the highest artistic merit, who understood Tolkien's vision of fairy tales and fantasy and mythology [...] The new film(s) would have to be hand-drawn animation, which can imply and leave room for so much more in our imaginations
But in all seriousness, I hope the movies can rival the original trilogy and do not go the pandering route of the Amazon show.