davem - in this recent post and in other past posts you write that nobody has to make a movie. Any future problems can be dispatched with the ease of a magic wand simply by not making the movie. I certainly cannot argue with that. If I never drive in New York City I certainly do not have to worry about the traffic there. If I do not build a house on the side of a steep hill in California I certainly do not concern myself with fires and mudslides in that part of the world. Very very true.
However, allow me the temerity to say that your approach is extremely simplistic. Effective yes. But simplistic just the same.
We both live in a very real world. In that world, the imperatives that drive business may well drive an important part of the world. Here are the facts regardless of how you or I or anyone else may feel about them.
New Line Cinema owns the film rights to JRRT's LOTR and THE HOBBIT.
Peter Jackson helmed three of the most financially successful films of all time using these rights.
New Line Cinema is in the business of making films to make money for its owners and stockholders. In business, nothing succeeds like success.
Jackson is the odds on favorite, perhaps the prohibitive favorite, to helm future Middle-earth films based on properties that New Line owns.
There is far more in LOTR and HOBBIT about Middle-earth than the simple narrative tales of a brief time span. They have numerous references to events going back to the First and Second Ages as well as highly detailed material about the Third Age in which both LOTR and HOBBIT are placed. As such, those references are owned by New Line and are fair game for any director they may hire to lead such a project.
Some of these historical references are sketchy and not fully fleshed out to the point where you can make a sustained film about them.
There are other JRRT works, not owned by New Line, which provide a fuller, more descriptive narrative of these events which could be employed to bridge a gap between a HOBBIT film and the LOTR films which hundreds of people are already well acquainted with.
I think those facts are reality. To say that New Line or others simply do not have to make the films is to ignore that reality.
I am not advocating that the Tolkien Estate sign over the rights to SIL or HOME or any other property. I am suggesting that common sense prevail and the Estate allow the filmmakers to properly use more fully developed narratives, dialogue and descriptions in events in those books IF THEY APPLY TO MATERIAL COVERED IN EITHER THE HOBBIT OR LOTR.
I am not talking about a movie about Goldolin simply because Elrond mentions it in THE HOBBIT. I am not talking about a movie about Beren and Luthien and the silmarils simply because Aragorn sings about it in LOTR. But the White Councils dealings with the rise of the Necromancer, the assault on Dol guldur, the Erebor events and other material would be relevant and subject for inclusion.
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But after what they did to LotR I don't see why the Estate should care what happens to New Line....)
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I do not think they should be too angry about all the extra millions of copies of LOTR that were generated because of renewed interest in that subject generated by the success of those three films. If that amounts to harsh or shabby treatment, please, where do I get in that line for some of that harshness