Amazon Is Making a 'Lord of the Rings' Prequel Series (techcrunch.com) 109
Amazon is making a Lord of the Rings prequel TV series for its Amazon Instant streaming service. The show, which already carries a multi-season commitment, will "explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring." TechCrunch reports: It's possible the new series will mine the ponderous but rich Silmarillion for material, as fan fiction writers and lore aficionados have done for decades. The exploits of the Elf-Lords of old would make for a stirring epic, while many would thrill at the possibility of seeing Moria at the height of its grandeur. So much depends on the quality of the adaptation, though. Amazon has been pretty good about its Originals, but this will be an undertaking far beyond the scope of anything its studios and partners have yet attempted. Amazon is partnering with New Line Cinema, which of course was the film company behind the much-loved trilogy that began in 2001, and the Tolkien Estate, as well as HarperCollins for some reason. The deal also "includes a potential additional spin-off series," presumably if it's popular enough.
Peter Jackson (Score:1, Insightful)
And I hope Peter will be involved somehow..
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In my opinion, of course.
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"Bad Taste" - Full movie on Youtube link (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/t6AHCK3if-I [youtu.be]
I only watched the first five minutes but that's enough.
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I'm sure Perter Jackson's ears perked up at this announcement. He loves to put a lot of bloat into his movies, which translates well to TV. A lot of the stuff in NZ is probably still intact and would make for great sets I'm sure. The problem is that if they were to work with him he would probably demand a lot of benefits for NZ; the Hobbit movies were *expensive* but they made a ton, so...
Guilermo Del Toro was supposed to do the Hobbit before PJ took over, so they might be able to get him involved...
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NZ wanted to maintain the beauty of the landscape, so a lot of the land the sets were made on had to be transformed back to their original state.
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I suspect that it wouldn't be hard for him to convince them to do it again on the same land.
And it looks like the Shire is doing well for itself as a major tourist attraction...
http://www.hobbitontours.com/e... [hobbitontours.com]
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And I hope Peter will be involved somehow..
Oh, I can think of another New Zealander who I would love to see in the film!
Kim Dotcom!
Yes, he is tanned and rested, and through and through ready for the job.
Although, he is a bit creepy, but that what Tolkien was all about anyway.
Just stuff his fat, hairy ass into a Elf costume, and he will be a hit.
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Re:Peter Jackson (Score:5, Insightful)
After the travesty of the Hobbit. I would not wish for this.
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Bloat... LotR turned three dense books into three movies.
The Hobbit turned one smallish book into three over-drawn-out slogs....
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Stretching it too thin. The Hobbit would have been OK as two movies, and could probably have been done in one There wasn't enough source material for three.
Also, for a lot of people whose primary exposure to LOTR was through the original movies, the Hobbit changed certain aesthetics. IE, the dwarves had a markedly different style in The Hobbit. The goblins also were very, very different, and they used a good deal more CGI in The Hobbit versus LOTR.
Plus - and this is somewhat the "fault" of the source ma
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I don't see it. The main problem areas of The Hobbit trilogy were not particularly long. And where it really shines in my opinion were some of the more fleshed out added content. The 5 second part where an Elf falls in love with a dwarf because he made a joke about his penis was not necessitated by the trilogy, Their is loads of ways they could of included those elves, if anything they needed to spend more time fleshing out whatever relationship their was instead of providing the entire motivation in that o
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Bilbo was Sauron all along?
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I never understood the complaint about that weakness. It said the aliens where aware of there weakness and avoided water areas.
When we look at planets to settle, they are all hostile to us. I imagine the aliens should have worn protective gear but as far as weaknesses goes, this was fairly reasonable.
do not want! (Score:1)
do not want!
Re:Just more Piling On (Score:4, Insightful)
Hobbit was a tale of small town heroes adventuring away, whereas LotR was an epic tale of the plight of humanity against malicious and demonic adversaries. Huge scale difference.
With this prequel, they could potentially create something on par with LotR in terms of scale. However, few of the original LotR actors would be involved in the prequel... so the success or failure is going to depend upon the direction, the story and the casting. The LotR franchise (including The Hobbit) are on thin ice though. If there is a whiff of any garbage getting into this new series, it will lose its audience faster than Sauron losing everything with the loss of his ring finger.
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Depends. TV as a medium has shifted DRAMATICALLY in the last few decades.
If it's 1980's style "self contained story every episode" type TV then yeah, it'll be stupid. If it's the more modern format of it essentially just being one huge story chopped into 1-hour long chunks then that will work fine.
Re:Just more Piling On (Score:4, Interesting)
If they're actually going to the Silmarillion, then that could be something. It would be quite something to see Tuor's journey to Nevrast and meeting with Ulmo, Lord of the Waters, or Ungoliant's poisoning of the Two Trees, and Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, would make any other filmed fantasy battle look like a game of Stratego in comparison. Go to the Second Age, a full recounting of the Fall of Numenor would make for an extraordinary sequence.
But probably it will just be about young Thorin traipsing about Middle Earth, or Bullroarer's licentious joinings with busty Hobbit lasses.
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LotR was an epic tale of the plight of humanity against malicious and demonic adversaries.
What humans? LotR was just a never ending borefest of ghosts and goblins. I didn't get what anyone got excited about. The material while original in it's day (ie the book in the 50's), has been retold so many times in every fantasy/sci-fi genre ever since that it was all a bit predictable.
I watched the trilogy but baulked at the thought of doing it all again for the Hobbit. Enough flogging, the horse is dead...
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Did anyone even go see The Hobbit?
They were a blockbuster success. $3 billion gross box office. A lot of people saw them.
I personally enjoyed them, but didn't really like them. I liked parts of them, and even enjoyed some of the changes they made, and backstory bits they added in.
But even with the additions it felt like butter scraped over too much bread. ;)
Hobbit (Score:2, Funny)
If I recall,they filmed the Hobbit at an unusually high framerate. At last, their genius becomes apparent. Simply play back the Hobbit films at a far lower framerate, and hey presto - a 250 hour Netflix series, ready for release!
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> If I recall, they filmed the Hobbit at an unusually high framerate.
Yes, they did at 48 FPS. They made two mistakes:
* 48 fps STILL looks like shit since it is sub 60 FPS. There is a reason VR try to aim for 96 FPS as a minimum. The sweet spot is between 96 Hz and 120 Hz for _smooth_ motion.
* A high frame can't save crappy directing. They had TWO directors due to the extreme workload -- Peter almost suffered complete burn-out [youtube.com] due to Warner Bros fucking them over.
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Your information is out-of-date. You are talking about old school VR from the 90's.
In contradistinction, VR today renders each frame for each eye. [reddit.com] And that was THREE years ago.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/... [anandtech.com]
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Silmarillion? (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I loved reading it - but I'm not sure there's a huge television market of people wanting to watch stories where everyone eventually gets killed by the bad guys.
In comparison to The Silmarillion, the Game of Thrones is a feel-good epic.
Re: Silmarillion? (Score:1)
You had me at ince....I mean dragons.
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Personally, I'd rather see "Gollum: The Early Years." When he's hiding in the case, with no light. Hopefully, while he's going through a mute phase.
Because the black filler between the commercials sounds more interesting than this.
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I don't really see the point. It makes no sense to do prequels of that, basically throwing away money. Going to make up new stories, might just as well create a whole new story theme, it seems a waste of money to pay for basically hobbits (elves and everything else are licence free, only the hobbits ties it to Lord of the Rings, so you basically pay licence fees for pretty much nothing but limiting the story).
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Yeah, I just read the wiki synopsis. A barrel of laughs, are the children of Hurin. I bet Game of Thrones fans would love it, though.
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I guess it'll depend who all's alive after the upcoming final season. In Children of Hurin, it's basically no one.
too many streaming platforms (Score:4, Informative)
There are just to many too many streaming platforms out there. Much less a lot of HBO like ones that have shows on them I don't want to have to buy / deal with 4-5 different stores / ui's / apps / offline rules.
HBO
amazon prime
youtube red
CBS All Access
netflix
etc
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And when that happens (and it will), I'll still have seen nothing.
Because I won't be bothering.
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This.
They are going to kill the "golden goose" with their greed. We don't need tons of separate (with their own charges, and software interfaces) streaming services with their own exclusives that might be worth watching, buts tons of crap not worth anyone's time as the bulk...
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At the very moment these media brands all set up their own streaming services they will see a curious thing: instead of setting up N monthly $10 subscriptions, people will rediscover the wonders of torrents...
I don't know what they are thinking.
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Everyone bitches that the cable monthly bill costs too much.
Welcome to TV a la carte.
And yes, it sucks.
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Welcome to TV a la carte.
This is one a la carte model, but we could easily have it per-show. The technology exists to make it happen, and it probably will happen eventually. There are lots of reasons why the current distributors don't want it to happen, but if you look at TPB you will rapidly see that lots of people want to get their content per-episode and finding a way to get them to pay for it is potentially lucrative.
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Step 2: Each subscribe to one or two streaming platforms.
Step 3: Share your passwords.
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There are just to many too many streaming platforms out there. Much less a lot of HBO like ones that have shows on them I don't want to have to buy / deal with 4-5 different stores / ui's / apps / offline rules.
HBO
amazon prime
youtube red
CBS All Access
netflix
etc
Predicted this a while back, a service will come along and combine all of these services into one package that you can access through a single device connected to a cable. All that has happened before will happen again... except we'll herald it as NEW and EXCITING because its ON THE INTERWEBS !1!!11!ONE!!1!ELEVEN!!!
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That service already exists. Ever heard of TPB?
When Netflix came their influence faded a bit because people were able to get their content easily, legally, and *now* instead of waiting for a torrent to download. But the greed of media companies may well reverse the trend.
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There are just to many too many streaming platforms out there.
It's almost like we need one platform to rule them all...
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Those three LotR films were ponderous, long winded and felt like they would never end.
Seems like they nailed it to me.
HarperCollins (Score:1)
HarperCollins has the print publishing rights to Tolkein's work, so if there are any books to come out of this....
Arfghhghhj (Score:1)
Milk (Score:2)
Someone call PETA itâ(TM)s animal abuse to milk this poor cow so many times.
One does not simply (Score:5, Funny)
Never mind...
Could be great, could be terrible (Score:2)
Anything less than production values equal to the movies won't do well.
Aside from that, it'll depend on the writing. A TV adaptation of the tale of Lúthien and Beren could be very cool. Tolkien wrote the bare outline in the Silmarillion, but no dialog and not a whole lot of detail. It's a love story, so Hollywood can just use it, rather than shoehorning in a bullshit love story of their own (thanks for nothing, Hobbit). It also fits well in the current zeitgeist, since Lúthien does a lot of th
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We can expect Netflix to do a better job than MTV.
Crap. Of course I meant Amazon, not Netflix. Still better than MTV, if not quite as good as Netflix.
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>travesty of an adaptation of the Elfstones of Shannara
You mean, "Pretty Young People With Pointy Ears (and not a hell of a lot else going for it)"?
Yeah, sad they botched it. But that's the market these days - forget the premise, are the actors young, pretty, and the characters in constant relationship drama regardless of logic?
Isnt it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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wait, what? (Score:2)
This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed. That LotR and The Hobbit were exceptions because JRRT sold the rights while he was still alive, but no more under any circumstances. This is why Jackson had The Hobbit and some material from the appendices at the end of Return of the King (if you haven't read them, you should -- there are stories in there) instead of filming "The Quest of Erebor", the larger, more ser
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This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed.
Who said it's his words? As with things like Riverdale, they could just buy the rights to the characters (if they haven't already) and do whatever they like with them
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This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed.
Who said it's his words? As with things like Riverdale, they could just buy the rights to the characters (if they haven't already) and do whatever they like with them
Fair enough. (And incidentally, I'd have no interest in watching that.) But then, in what capacity is the Tolkien estate (which means Christopher, let's face it) involved?
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"So why, after all these years of feeding off his father's works, and hamstringing further attempts at filming his father's works, does Christopher suddenly give the ok to film other stories, to his old nemesis New Line, of all people?"
Chris has no talent to write on his own, so it's the standard reason... $$$$$$$
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So why, after all these years of feeding off his father's works, and hamstringing further attempts at filming his father's works, does Christopher suddenly give the ok to film other stories, to his old nemesis New Line, of all people?
Christopher Tolkien is resigning from his position with his father's estate. A new regime is taking control. [slashfilm.com]
If it's an interesting story who cares? (Score:2)
That said, if Netflix can bring interesting stories to the canon, who the hell cares? Good stories are good, bad stories are bad.
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The Hobbit should have never been 3 2 hour movies. Especially as LoTR was 3 2 hour moves.
That said, if Netflix can bring interesting stories to the canon, who the hell cares? Good stories are good, bad stories are bad.
Netflixs series were great when the first started making original series. Now it is mostly what ever crap they can get thee hands on to prop up there library (because the studios are trying to rape them on the licencing of there back catalogs). There are still a few gems comming out everynow and then but you cant count on everything they do to be amazing anymore.
However this is Amazon making these not Netflix and none of thier original series have been that great in my opinion.
Silmarillion? (Score:1)
Not while Christopher Tolkien is alive.
Hasn't this already been done? (Score:2)
Re:No one cares. (Score:4, Informative)
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I agree with this.... [a shadow seems to pass over sconeu's face]. I would say more, but a shadow seems to have passed over my face.
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