{"id":8145,"date":"2017-11-04T17:50:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T17:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/dazposer\/?p=8145"},"modified":"2017-11-04T17:50:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T17:50:38","slug":"game-of-groans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/2017\/11\/04\/game-of-groans\/","title":{"rendered":"Game of Groans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Movie trade magazine Deadline<\/em> reports that…<\/p>\n

“the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien is currently shopping around rights to a TV series based on The Lord of the Rings<\/em> with a hefty sticker price. The Tolkien estate has put a price tag of $200-250 million dollars on the rights and is currently taking meetings with Netflix and Amazon”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ugh. I do hope it’s not going to be “Games of Thrones<\/em>-ified” and “global-reach”-ified once they get the rights. But it probably is. Because a $200-250m price, plus the $750m making-of costs, will demand as wide an audience as possible, with only a few scraps thrown to the fan-base for Tolkien’s writing. Jeff Bezos just sold $1.1 billion in Amazon stock, so they have that sort of cash. They’ll have to get that back.<\/p>\n

There are<\/em> more back-stories to be told in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, it’s true.<\/p>\n

For instance, one could have an alternately charming \/ creepy Shire Stories<\/em> series of self-contained episodes: Bilbo’s visit to the Michel Delving mathomhouse; Ted’s “cousin Hal” encounters the “walking trees” “beyond the North Moors” (last of the Ent-wives?); Gandalf’s arrangements with the dwarves for the making and delivery of the Party toys, his design and making of the Party fireworks; the building of The Hedge, the attack of the trees of the Old Forest, the burning of the bonfire glade; and Farmer Maggot’s encounters with Tom Bombadil. Etc. There are also plenty of pre-Bilbo places for more epic back-stories, such as the life-story of Aragorn.<\/p>\n

But as Phil Dragash has so ably shown<\/a>, full-cast \/ full-symphonic audio-only seems the best way forward. Which, interestingly, puts such back-story ventures well within the reach of fan-work makers, and for a lot less cost than $1bn. All you have to do is find someone who can write like Tolkien, and with the same pre-modern concerns. Which may, admittedly, be rather tricksy.<\/p>\n

\n

Update. Amazon got the TV rights to The Lord of the Rings<\/em>…<\/p>\n

“Set in Middle-Earth, the television adaptation [“a multi-season commitment”] will explore new storylines preceding J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em>. The deal includes a potential additional spin-off series.” Telling… “previously unexplored stories based on J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s original writings”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting, so it’s a Second Age prequel series. New Line Cinema are lined up. I’ll bet Apple won’t be able to resist making it politically-correct, despite the risk that entails to getting back their $1.2 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Movie trade magazine Deadline reports that… “the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien is currently shopping around rights to a TV series based on The Lord of the Rings with a hefty sticker price. The Tolkien estate has put a price tag of $200-250 million dollars on the rights and is currently taking meetings with Netflix and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotted-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}