Lord of the Rings

[Shadowboxer]

WTF???

[sean_stonehart]

From the same site...

Don't **** Off a LAN Party otherwise they might come dance at your wedding!!!!

This was great... I almost fell out of my chair...

[Kristoffer]

this is so fucked up

[PHILBERT]

Looked like me at my brother's wedding, except I was clean cut and wearing a tuxedo. Gotta love the old man who flips off the camera man.

[GeneChing]

Amazon in Early Talks for Lord of the Rings TV Series

AMAZON STREAMING THE LORD OF THE RINGS TV NEWS TV PREMIERE DATES
BY SPENCER PERRY ON NOVEMBER 4, 2017


Amazon in early talks for Lord of the Rings TV Series

Variety reports that Warner Bros. and The Tolkein estate have been quietly shopping around a television series based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings book series and after interest from multiple parties, Amazon has emerged as the front runner for the series’ home. The outlet notes that no deal has been set and that talks are still early; however, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is reportedly “personally involved in the negotiations” for the series.


Though fans will likely scratch their heads at another adaptation of the property so soon after Peter Jackson’s beloved film trilogy, HBO’s Game of Thrones is set to conclude in the coming years and with it leave a giant hole in television programming that The Lord of the Rings could surely fill. Amazon has also been eager to shift their programming slate away from smaller, niche programming and more towards large-scale shows that could have international appeal, another checked box for the Tolkein series.

The Lord of the Rings was first published over the course of a year from July 1954 to October 1955 and would go on to become one of the best-selling novels ever written. Filmmaker Peter Jackson adapted the series into three feature films released in 2001, 2002, and 2003, which combined would go on to gross over $2.9 billion with 30 Academy Award nominations between the three films and 17 wins; The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Director and Best Picture. Jackson would go on to adapt Tolkein’s The Hobbit as three feature films, released in 2012, 2013, and 2014, which would have a combined worldwide box office gross that matched The Lord of the Rings. The six films combined have brought in $5.8 billion at the global box office.

For archival sake:
The Hobbit
Two Towers
Return of the King

[GeneChing]

TO RULE THEM ALL
Why Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Show Won’t Be the New Game of Thrones
The streaming service is gunning for HBO’s crown.
by JOANNA ROBINSON
NOVEMBER 13, 2017 6:00 PM


Left, from New Line/Everett Collection; Right, from Everett Collection

With HBO currently in production on the final season of its juggernaut fantasy series Game of Thrones, a number of networks are hoping to be the new source for your Sunday night swords and dragons fix. HBO, for one, is hoping to retain its audiences by launching one (or more) Thrones spin-offs—but it will have to compete with Showtime’s adaptation of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicles and, now, with Amazon’s freshly announced multi-season series set in the world of the fantasy series that most inspired George R.R. Martin (and practically every other working fantasy writer): J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

According to an announcement Monday, “the television adaptation will explore new story lines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.” That means the events of this series will take place prior to Frodo Baggins’ journey—but there’s no word yet on whether the time period in question is pre- or post-Bilbo Baggins’ discovery of the ring in The Hobbit. Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins, clarifies that the series will “bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings,” which leaves a lot of leeway for elaborate inspired-by inventions a la the many side stories that padded out Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. In other words, this could be a by-the-book Silmarillion-esque nerdfest, or a show sure to enrage the Tolkien die-hards as much as Jackson’s invented love story between Evangeline Lilly’s elf warrior Tauriel and Aidan Turner’s dwarf Kíli.

Speaking of Jackson’s films: the Amazon announcement makes no mention of whether there might be any crossover between them and the series. But since the production is a partnership between Amazon, the Tolkien Estate and Trust, HarperCollins and, crucially, New Line Cinema, the option isn’t technically off the table. It might take all of Smaug’s golden hoard to lure Cate Blanchett or Sir Ian McKellen back to play the immortal-ish characters of Galadriel or Gandalf, but never say never when it comes to movie stars and TV.

An even less appealing approach might be the one that the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises are taking, but I won’t say the phrase “Young Gandalf” again if you won’t. Still, all the younger wizards and elves of Middle Earth can’t guarantee that this Lord of the Rings TV series will be the next Game of Thrones. For one thing, the HBO series started as a very faithful adaptation with a built-in audience of loyal book fans. Tolkien fans, still licking their wounds after the Hobbit trilogy, are likely to be very wary of another potentially less-than-faithful prequel. More importantly, most close observers of TV trends doubt there will ever be another Game of Thrones. The viewership is simply too fractured and too distracted now to allow any show, no matter the subject matter, to capture a Thrones-level audience ever again.

But even if trends shift unexpectedly and there is another massive breakout hit, does it seem likely that the biggest show to follow Thrones will be something that so closely resembles and inspired it? That’s not, historically, how these things go. Copycat shows—if you can even call a Tolkien property a copycat of the genre it helped popularize—sometimes enjoy a measure of success, sure, but they’re rarely ever the next big thing. Just ask Lost knockoffs The Event, V, The Nine, FlashForward, and My Generation (who? exactly), which all tried and failed to ride the wave of ABC’s sci-fi desert-island success.

Lord of the Rings absolutely has more brand recognition for audiences than any of those shows, but you don’t have to look back to discover that aping Thrones hasn’t exactly been a recipe for smash success. In the wake of Thrones mania, Starz wisely snapped another best-selling fantasy adaptation: Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. But while the 2.09 million viewers who tuned in to the recent Season 3 premiere of that show constituted a banner night for Starz, those ratings pale in comparison to the 16.5 million viewers who tuned in to the Season 7 Game of Thrones finale just a few weeks before. Starz’s American Gods, MTV’s (now Spike’s and soon to be Paramount Network’s) The Shannara Chronicles, and Syfy’s The Magicians—all also based on popular fantasy-book series—have proven to be expensive shows with an even smaller fraction of the enthusiastic Thrones audience.

Amazon will certainly survive if it gambles on Lord of the Rings and falls short of taking the crown away from Game of Thrones. But the streaming service is no doubt banking on its foray into Middle Earth to be more than just a moderate hit. News of the Tolkien adaptation came on the same day that Ad Age published an unconfirmed report that Amazon may soon be launching a free, ad-supported version of Prime video. In other words, if users are willing to put up with commercials, they can skip the $99 annual fee that serves as a paywall for Amazon’s original and occasionally award-winning programming.

A “freemium” platform isn’t the same as pay services like HBO Now or CBS All Access—but both of those services were launched and pushed with the enticing promise of Game of Thrones and new Star Trek episodes. If this Lord of the Rings-based show becomes must-see TV, then Amazon could safely expect to see a major swell in viewership for any theoretical new streaming platform. In the ongoing streaming wars, consider this Lord of the Rings series Amazon’s most prized weapon. But will it be enough to rule them all and bind audiences in the era of Peak TV?

Young Gandalf...

[GeneChing]

Not the Silmarillion? Time to make this into it's own indie thread.

Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon
James Hibberd November 13, 2017 AT 01:21 PM EST

Amazon has officially greenlit one show that it hopes to rule them all.

The company has made a multi-season production commitment to a television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings.

It’s a major deal securing one of the biggest brands in pop culture for what’s likely to be one of the most expensive TV shows ever made.

But there’s a catch, creatively speaking: The series will explore storylines set before the events in the first LOTR novel, The Fellowship of the Ring. In other words: The war to destroy the One Ring as chronicled in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy of films will not be told in the TV version. So this story is either set before The Hobbit or in between The Hobbit and LOTR.

This something we’ve seen with other recent TV series when they tackle major cinematic titles with certain rights restrictions. Like how Fox’s Gotham can tell the story of young Bruce Wayne but not Batman, how FX’s Legion has avoided using the term “X-Men” even though its an X-Men project, or how Syfy’s upcoming series based on The Purge films will be set in between actual Purges.

Amazon’s deal includes a potential addition of a spin-off series as well.

“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”

There’s no cast or premiere date yet, but the series will eventually stream on Amazon Prime.

The move by Amazon comes as HBO prepares to conclude its mammoth fantasy hit Game of Thrones, which will almost certainly premiere its final six episodes in 2019. HBO is developing multiple potential prequel series based on author George R.R. Martin’s Westerosi history, though none are guaranteed to air.

In a way, Amazon’s LOTR project and HBO’s GoT prequels face the exact same challenge: The great high-stakes story and beloved characters that made each tale such a classic will have already been told — and both benefited from mining a fantasy author’s years of extraordinary effort producing more than a thousand pages of intricate creative storytelling. So can a network find writers who can successfully bootstrap a relatively new-ish story set in these familiar fantasy worlds that capture at least some percentage of the original work’s worldwide appeal?

It’s a tough call as to which company has the more difficult task. For Amazon, the stakes are rather low (the company’s stock is trading at an incredible $1,138 per share). For HBO, the stakes are very high — GoT is an unprecedented massive moneymaker for the network and a creating subscription-worthy TV is its core business (while fending off the likes of Netflix and Amazon). But HBO has a distinct creative advantage in that they’re developing five potential prequels while committing to none in advance — so the network has several chances to find a story that really works before deciding on a path. This new deal struck between the Tolkien Estate and Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins, however, locks Amazon into a multi-year series commitment without so much as a writer yet hired — that’s the type of deal that keeps a traditional network up at night though, again, Amazon can afford the write-off if it all goes south.

Hollywood is all about world-building right now, so perhaps will be fantastic — and hopefully they will. This is what Marvel is already doing with its big screen heroes and Disney with its new Star Wars titles, after all. A series is in some respects more difficult than pulling off two-hour film, however. As a wise man once wrote: “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off…”

[GeneChing]

Not the Silmarillion? Time to make this into its own indie thread from the LOTR thread.

Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon
James Hibberd November 13, 2017 AT 01:21 PM EST

Amazon has officially greenlit one show that it hopes to rule them all.

The company has made a multi-season production commitment to a television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings.

It’s a major deal securing one of the biggest brands in pop culture for what’s likely to be one of the most expensive TV shows ever made.

But there’s a catch, creatively speaking: The series will explore storylines set before the events in the first LOTR novel, The Fellowship of the Ring. In other words: The war to destroy the One Ring as chronicled in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy of films will not be told in the TV version. So this story is either set before The Hobbit or in between The Hobbit and LOTR.

This something we’ve seen with other recent TV series when they tackle major cinematic titles with certain rights restrictions. Like how Fox’s Gotham can tell the story of young Bruce Wayne but not Batman, how FX’s Legion has avoided using the term “X-Men” even though its an X-Men project, or how Syfy’s upcoming series based on The Purge films will be set in between actual Purges.

Amazon’s deal includes a potential addition of a spin-off series as well.

“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”

There’s no cast or premiere date yet, but the series will eventually stream on Amazon Prime.

The move by Amazon comes as HBO prepares to conclude its mammoth fantasy hit Game of Thrones, which will almost certainly premiere its final six episodes in 2019. HBO is developing multiple potential prequel series based on author George R.R. Martin’s Westerosi history, though none are guaranteed to air.

In a way, Amazon’s LOTR project and HBO’s GoT prequels face the exact same challenge: The great high-stakes story and beloved characters that made each tale such a classic will have already been told — and both benefited from mining a fantasy author’s years of extraordinary effort producing more than a thousand pages of intricate creative storytelling. So can a network find writers who can successfully bootstrap a relatively new-ish story set in these familiar fantasy worlds that capture at least some percentage of the original work’s worldwide appeal?

It’s a tough call as to which company has the more difficult task. For Amazon, the stakes are rather low (the company’s stock is trading at an incredible $1,138 per share). For HBO, the stakes are very high — GoT is an unprecedented massive moneymaker for the network and a creating subscription-worthy TV is its core business (while fending off the likes of Netflix and Amazon). But HBO has a distinct creative advantage in that they’re developing five potential prequels while committing to none in advance — so the network has several chances to find a story that really works before deciding on a path. This new deal struck between the Tolkien Estate and Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins, however, locks Amazon into a multi-year series commitment without so much as a writer yet hired — that’s the type of deal that keeps a traditional network up at night though, again, Amazon can afford the write-off if it all goes south.

Hollywood is all about world-building right now, so perhaps will be fantastic — and hopefully they will. This is what Marvel is already doing with its big screen heroes and Disney with its new Star Wars titles, after all. A series is in some respects more difficult than pulling off two-hour film, however. As a wise man once wrote: “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off…”

[GeneChing]