[Lalwendë]

To be fair, I think many writers, especially those who have not attained huge financial success, sell on film rights because they simply would like some more money! The problem emerges when a film is likely to be seen by 'family' audiences so film-makers believe they must tone down any contentious elements (currently I'm a bit scared of what might happen to Northern Lights...) or when a novel has a great story but is much more than a simple story when on the page and thus doesn't translate well to film - I'm thinking of the unholy mess they made of Possession here.

Personally I really don't care to see a film of CoH made anytime soon - far better to let the book lie for a while and enter the public consciousness that way. They made films of Harry Potter too soon, and there simply wasn't enough time for mental images of Harry, Hermione etc to form in readers' minds, so Harry will forever be Daniel Radcliffe now. LotR benefitted from not being filmed for a long time - my mental images of most characters are still intact and not spoiled by the films due to the amount of time they existed only within my own mind - e.g. Elrond still has grey hair and a beard to me.

It's the fault of "I want it now!" modern culture - even bands have no time to grow and develop, so you get the very modern (and disappointing) problem of 'dodgy second albums' all the time, and bands last about a year or two before splitting up.

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

If all this is true, I wonder how all these nasty stories get started leading folks like me to believe that the Tolkien Estate - and Christoper in particular - did not like or approve of the movies? I could have sworn than I have read this many times in many places over the last few years. I certainly cannot remember ever seeing the opposite - that Christopher or any other member of the Estate was thankful for the films, was thankful for the additional revenue they produced for them, or at the least had even enjoyed them.

Now going back to this interesting question, I think that the reason there are so many gripes directed towards the Tolkien estate is simple jealousy! The estate keep a tight reign on archives, and on who can look at them and what they can do with them. That's perfectly acceptable to my mind as they are only trying to quality control what is put out in Tolkien's name, and there already enough unauthorised crackpot texts/critiques/biographies out there.

They also manage to hold back a potential flood of thoroughly non-canonical writings. Fan fic is great, and I've played a few RPGs myself, but I will never accept them as being from Tolkien's own mind because they obviously are not; I can accept editing from Christopher as he knew his father better than anyone could have done, but fan fic is a whole different kettle of fish. Star Wars fans are always falling out due to the spin-off novels which are stuffed with conflicting info - can you imagine how bad it would be if Tolkien fans had to put up with that?! It's bad enough dealing with Tolkien's contradictory letters!

The estate also have to hold back the flood of us 'fans' a little as we can admittedly be pretty obsessive! And no doubt the family remember the horrors Tolkien suffered of being rung up in the middle of the night by over-keen fans!

They also have a right to earn some money from the estate - Tolkien worked incredibly hard to keep his family on a relatively low wage and struggled with bills so it's nice that he left them something to help them out. They are not all rich through the legacy, as simply there are a lot of Tolkiens out there! They all have their own professional lives and are not leeching off the estate.

And most of all, they are really nice people, often involved with the Tolkien Society even though they have no need to be, and also approachable and friendly.

I honestly don't think they will release film rights to CoH for many, many years, if ever.