The Shadow Of ‘The Rings Of Power’ Hangs Over Warner Bros’ New ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Movies

“Always after a defeat and a respite, the shadow takes another shape and grows again.”

~ Gandalf, The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

~ Frodo, probably, The Return Of The Jedi King

New Lord Of The Rings movies are in the works over at Warner Bros. The new films come 20 years after the Peter Jackson trilogy made history as one of the greatest cinematic adaptations of all time (though I had plenty of bones to pick with those films when they released). There are no details beyond this announcement. No directors or actors are attached to the project. No release date is in sight. And yet already I feel a terrible sense of dread.

The move comes as Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav has cut costs across the board, cancelling shows and movies, and scaling back streaming operations in a massively unpopular—though probably necessary—attempt to climb out of the red and into the black. Call it a streaming hangover. All the big players are waking up to the realities of a post-spending-spree bender.

A new venture into Middle-earth, tapping into that deep well of Tolkien content, comes at its own cost, of course. Embracer Group owns the film rights to Tolkien’s work, so Warner has worked out a deal with the Swedish holding company (largely known for its acquisitions of video game studios) at an undisclosed price. Given how expensive Tolkien is these days now that he’s so en vogue, it can’t have been cheap.

So what to make of all of this?

In purely business terms, Warner Bros. is almost certainly on to something. Tolkien has never been more popular. The fantasy genre has never been so lucrative. A new foray into Middle-earth will create buzz and hype and, if it’s not a total disaster, make a dragon’s hoard worth of money at the box-office and vis-a-vis merchandizing and all the rest. Video game tie-ins await, HBO Max spinoff series practically write themselves. Even the disappointing Hobbit trilogy made money, though less and less over the course of each film. Perhaps Warner Bros learned some lessons from that—though the cynic in me can find no reason to believe in such fairy tales.

As much as I want to be excited for more Lord Of The Rings I can’t help but think that mostly it’s all just a pale shadow compared to the books I fell in love with as a child. Years and years ago I wrote a piece for The Atlantic wondering when this obsession with adapting fantasy into movies and TV would wear off—and, of course, since then it’s just gotten more and more popularized and mainstreamed.

The way I see it, there are essentially three options for Warner Bros. when it comes to making new Lord of the Rings movies:

• First, to remake the movies to suit modern times. The basic story remains the same, but with better special effects and a more diverse cast to appease modern audiences (or, rather, modern media critics). Legolas will be a woman, the Hobbits will be Harfoots and so forth.
• Second, to tap into some other Tolkien story such as The Silmarillion. The trick is that’s really a collection of stories and fables and legends that would be extremely difficult to translate to the big screen. Still, it’s possible and could actually be quite exciting if done well. There are stories in The Silmarillion that could make excellent films, though this would require a great deal of skill and care (two things that often seem to be missing in Hollywood these days).
• Third, to follow Amazon’s example with The Rings Of Power and just completely ignore the source material altogether, instead creating wildly expensive fan-fiction while giving fans the proverbial bird. If you don’t like it, you’re a bigot.

My own dream—to adapt The Lord Of The Rings trilogy into a 2D-animated limited series that hews as close to the books as humanly possible—is just that: A dream. A wild fantasy that will likely only happen if I somehow become a billionaire (or befriend one) and can suddenly afford to purchase rights to such an ambitiously modest project and then pay to have it made. Give me all your money, dear readers, and we’ll make it together.

In two of these three scenarios I see disaster. A remake of such recently made films will suffer from constant comparison. Who will walk in the giant footsteps of Ian McKellen as Gandalf? Who would want to follow in the stride of Viggo Mortenson’s Aragorn? We already know how awful it must be to try and replace Cate Blanchett as Galadriel.

Indeed, The Rings Of Power hangs above all of this like a dark shadow. Before Amazon’s disastrous attempt at televising Middle-earth, fans might have greeted this news with the optimism of naïve children. Now we grit our teeth and wait for the beating.

There is a glimmer of hope, however dim. Director Peter Jackson might be involved in some way, though this is not confirmed (or denied).

“Warner Brothers and Embracer have kept us in the loop every step of the way,” Jackson and Lord of the Rings cowriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens said in a statement. “We look forward to speaking with them further to hear their vision for the franchise moving forward.”

That’s hopeful if vague, and really The Hobbit remains a sour spot for me and my opinion of Jackson’s filmmaking.

Whatever happens, the fact remains that we are once again tapping into the old instead of investing in the new, our giant media megacorporations relying on the scribblings of a long-dead English professor instead of creating something original. The joy of fantasy is in its ability to show us new and beautiful and terrifying worlds, to introduce us to new and exciting characters and magic. How can we ever hope to visit these unfamiliar places if all we ever do is churn out renditions?

What do you think of all this, dearest readers? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.