Did any of you ever see the sketch on the Ali G Show where Sasha Cohen as Ali G goes into a book publishers office to pitch a book? He opens by remarking how much money the LOTR films have made and then says something like "now imagine this .... LORD OF THE RINGS ... the book. We would sell like billions of copies". And the publisher sits there patiently and without batting an eye points out that the LOTR films were made from books ... books that were very successful before the movies were made.
That sketch is meant to be funny. But if humor like that is to work there has to be some truth and something recognizable in it. The fact is this, - right now and for some time to come, Middle-earth, LOTR, and all in it are wound together in a nice symbiotic package that includes both the books and the films. The number of tickets sold to the movies over that three year period exceeds the number of book sold over the last fifty plus years. There are probably a whole bunch of folks out there like Ali G who think that LOTR is just a series of movies and know nothing about the books.
There are probably others who saw the movies and then went out to buy and hopefully read the books. And for many others they are reminded of LOTR everytime they see toys, posters, statues, T-shirts and all the "junk" that some here hate so much.
You can like it or not. You can hate it or not. But its a reality that LOTR is now both the books and the movies all tied up together in the mind of the public. And now we are going to get at least two more Middle-earth movies over the next few years which will only make that symbiotic arrangement all the more cemented in the mind of the public.
In another post, the Saucepan Man rejected my idea of both parties working together saying
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And, while I can see that there might be some benefit to Zaentz and co in pursuing it, I fail to see any incentive for the Estate to go along with it.
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How about the incentive that the worldwide public thinks your product is mostly the movies and you don't like that impression? How about the incentive that the worldwide public is going to see more movies that you do not particularly like or approve of but right now are powerless to do anything about? How about the incentive of getting an expert adviser picked by the Estate in on the next two films giving expert advice and suggestions to help make the product more authentic so that when the next wave of millions of ticket buyers see the next two Middle-earth films, they see a product more authentic?
That is what I would like to see. An arrangement where both sides who are different parts of Middle-earth come together and benefit together. The films could gain more leeway in utilizing passages from other books when depicting things from the Appendicies in the effort to be more authentic and correct to what Tolkien wrote in much more detail. The Estate would get an expert on the inside, there to give advice, to make suggestions, and to further their own hopes of keeping it real and authentic.
Is that incentive enough?