Warner Bros Discovery recently announced its plans to produce more movies based on The Lord of the Rings following the success of Peter Jackson’s movies including The Hobbit. It’s unclear what the studio aims to adapt in author J.R.R. Tolkien’s extensive fantasy universe but it’s certainly ambitious. The company has now stated that it wants to turn The Lord of the Rings into a franchise like Star Wars.
A source told The Hollywood Reporter that “Warner Bros hopes to turn LOTR into a Star Wars-like franchise”, citing the success of Disney’s Star Wars franchise and its multiple television shows and movie spin-offs. Amazon previously released the first season of the big-budget television series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, with a second season already confirmed. Warner Bros also seems to have its own plans despite the community feeling divisive about the news.
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The Lord of the Rings books by the late J.R.R. Tolkien were originally adapted by filmmaker Peter Jackson into the groundbreaking trilogy released in the early 2000s. Since then, Jackson returned to direct a trilogy based on The Hobbit which served as a prequel to the events of The Lord of the Rings. While The Hobbit trilogy received decent reviews, fans were divided on the various additions to the movies that unnecessarily padded out its length, especially considering it was only one book barely half the size of one Lord of the Rings novel.
Hopefully, Warner Bros and New Line have learned some lessons since then and want to faithfully capture the world and wonder of Tolkien’s fantasy works in these new projects.
The Hollywood Reporter added that despite the studio’s ambitions to be like Star Wars, there aren’t any scripts currently written. Executives have already stated that the projects will not be remakes or reboots of Jackson’s movies but will rather tread new ground. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens – the award-winning team behind The Lord of the Rings movies – have all been briefed by Warner Bros about these new projects.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
