The newly-announced deal to make more Lord Of The Rings films is looking to take a page from the Lucasfilm playbook…
Just last week we covered the reports that more Lord Of The Rings films would be coming, courtesy of Warner Bros Discovery. Under the stewardship of David Zaslav, the studio is looking to lean hard into franchises and as such, it has done a deal with the rights holders, Embracer Group to bring more live action Lord Of The Rings movies into the world.
Whilst this process is clearly in the very early days, that hasn’t stopped The Hollywood Reporter from trying to find a few details out, with the outlet stating that a source has claimed the studio are looking to kickstart ‘a Star Wars-like franchise.’ Make of that what you will, but we’d be wary of drawing too many conclusions at this point.
If you recall, it wasn’t too long ago that Zaslav himself grandly declared that the new look DC Universe of movies wouldn’t have multiple Batmans running around. Whilst that promise still technically rings true, Zaslav is only just getting comfortable in his posh executive’s chair and we have multiple iterations of the Dark Knight getting movies commissioned.
There are a couple of details from the report that are a little more revealing though. One interesting nugget of information is that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, overseers of the beloved trilogy of 2000s Lord Of The Rings movies (and less loved Hobbit films) are in talks with Warner Bros to secure their involvement. Given that it’s unlikely that we’ll see full-blown remakes of Tolkien’s core Lord Of The Rings trilogy, the ‘Star Wars-like’ plan becomes a little clearer perhaps, with the idea to build a wider series of films around Jackson’s original six movies.
Amazon’s take on Middle-Earth, The Rings Of Power TV show factors into all of this as well, considering the studio is ploughing a huge amount of cash into its flagship entry into the prestige TV market. A series of Lord Of The Rings films from Warner Bros with the added embellishment of continuing Jackson’s beloved trilogy will surely not come as welcome news to Amazon as they continue to struggle to get fans to warm to The Rings Of Power. It’s worth mentioning as well that Warners’ deal covers the Third Age of Tolkien’s stories, that being the one that most fans are familiar with, featuring iconic characters like Gandalf, Aragorn and Bilbo Baggins.
Speaking of Bilbo, the other lingering question here is that of The Hobbit films. Audiences didn’t warm to Jackson’s prequel trilogy anywhere near as much as his earlier films, so how much will that affect the appetite for more stories from this world? Whilst information is scarce at the moment, the few details we’ve heard suggest that the next few months will be interesting to follow, not least because two corporate behemoths may be waging a battle for our attention, a conflict of the colossal scale that Lord Of The Rings stories tend to embody.
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