Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Hey, I wonj't be disappointed at all, since I fully expect Young Aragorn: Lord of the Game of Ring Thrones to be utter crap.

Well, white wolves did cross the Brandywine during the Fell Winter. Could zombies be far behind?

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Well, white wolves did cross the Brandywine during the Fell Winter. Could zombies be far behind?

And before The Wall there was the High Hay.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

And before The Wall there was the High Hay.

Which has magic that stops the Children of the Old Forest!

[Michael Murry]

I just caught this from Den of Geek:

John Rhys-Davies interview: Aux, Orcs, Lord Of The Rings, Indiana Jones and more

John Rhys-Davies tells us about Aux, autograph hunting, horror, the Lord Of The Rings TV series and more.

I don't do Internet links very well in this forum, so would someone please fix this if I get it wrong?

[URL="http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/john-rhys-davies/53281/john-rhys-davies-interview-aux-orcs-lord-of-the-rings-indiana-jones-and-more"[/URL]

The Interested reader will have to scroll down a bit in the interview to get to Mr Rhys-Davies' comments on LOTR, the Hobbit, and prospective TV series. He basically sees little but greed for more $$$$$$$ in the whole idea, something like on-line gambling.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Good for JRD. He's always told it like he sees it.

[davem]

Given that in the past the Estate has threatened legal action against a non-profit children's camp due to copyright https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...nge-name.shtml this whole money grab seems sordid to say the least. There are lots of good reasons for attacking Amazon (as I said, I avoid them because of their 'creative' approach to tax and their treatment of staff) but the anger should be directed at the Estate, who decided to cash in on Tolkien's creation. Any harm done to Tolkien's creation should be laid at the door of the Estate. What was born in the mud and blood of the Somme, has become a cash cow for a bunch of greedy business people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If the rights had been placed in the public domain we would have no doubt seen some appalling and offensive trash produced, but also some beautiful and creative productions. As it is, this deal will almost certainly only produce the former.

[Snowdog]

To add to my last post, the bar has been set admittedly low with the LotR movies, and especially The Hobbit movies. Being the rights were sold 48 years ago before there was a 'Tolkien Estate', the estate likely put a high price on this especially after the hassles they had with the films. Cash grab?maybe, but may as well get the $ beforehand instead of hassling over the 'profits'.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Snowdog

To add to my last post, the bar has been set admittedly low with the LotR movies, and especially The Hobbit movies. Being the rights were sold 48 years ago before there was a 'Tolkien Estate', the estate likely put a high price on this especially after the hassles they had with the films. Cash grab?maybe, but may as well get the $ beforehand instead of hassling over the 'profits'.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Except that the TV rights were not sold 48 years ago: they were sold in 2017.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by davem

Given that in the past the Estate has threatened legal action against a non-profit children's camp due to copyright https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...nge-name.shtml this whole money grab seems sordid to say the least.

Actions like that are an unfortunate necessity under current IP law: if the owner of a trademark doesn't act to protect it in cases like this, then the courts can find that the TM has been "abandoned" and is now public domain.

[Michael Murry]

Originally Posted by davem

... What was born in the mud and blood of the Somme, has become a cash cow for a bunch of greedy business people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If the rights had been placed in the public domain we would have no doubt seen some appalling and offensive trash produced, but also some beautiful and creative productions. As it is, this deal will almost certainly only produce the former.

Speaking of treasured literary works in the public domain and what inspiration -- both/either appalling and/or beautiful -- others have drawn from them, you might find the following of interest:

Celebrating 200 Years of FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA
Posted by Eric Diaz, the Nerdist.com (June 30, 2016)
https://nerdist.com/celebrating-200-...n-and-dracula/

And, in the appalling (but truthful) trash department we now have YouTube and unsolicited volunteers reading us the scatological Mad Magazine movie reviews, just in case crap movies have rendered us incapable of reading cartoon pictures for ourselves; like, for instance:

The Slobbit Mad Magazine Part One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJcNOe4Br1s

The Slobbit Mad Magazine Part Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3kDHXeMP7w

And these two videos only cover one-third of the bloated three-thirds of a one-movie story whose gross ticket receipts have convinced greedy investors to underwrite not one but several television seasons of ... just what I shudder to think.

[Michael Murry]

In my above comment about public-domain literary masterpieces and how later writers and movie directors feed off of them, I mentioned Bram Stoker's Dracula because -- in relation to Tolkien's epic triology, the scene featuring Smeagol-Gollum climbing face down a cliff in LOTR: The Two Towers comes straight from Dracula, where Jonathan Harker relates in his journal what he saw one night when looking out over the empty courtyard of the Count's delapidated castle.

... As I leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat to my left, where I imagined, from the lie of the rooms, that the window of the Count's own room would look out ...

What I saw was the Count's head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case, I could not mistake the hands wihich I had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castly wall over that dreadful abyss, face down , with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not beieve my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some wierd effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by this using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just like a lizard moves along a wall.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear -- in awful fear -- and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of ...

As Tolkien reworked the scene into his own tale:

Suddenly [Frodo] stiffened, and stooping he gripped Sam by the arm. 'What's that?' he whispered. 'Look over there on the cliff!'
Sam looked and breathed in sharply through his teeth. 'Ssss!' he said. 'That's what it is. It's that Gollum! Snakes and ladders! And to think that I thought that we'd puzzle him with our bit of a climb! Look at him! Like a nasty crawling spider on a wall.'
Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. Maybe its soft clinging hands and toes were finding crevices and holds that no hobbit could ever have seen or used, but it looked as if it was just creeping down on sticky pads, like some large prowling thing of insect-kind. And it was coming down head first, as if it was smelling its way. Now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again.

So J. R. R. Tolkien had no qualms about incorporating Bram Stoker's imagery into his own work and Peter Jackson followed Tolkien in the second film of his movie trilogy. Good thing for Tolkien, Jackson, and New Line Cinema that no one from the Bram Stoker Estate sued them for "intellectual property" infringement since Dracula does not just belong in the public domain, but has become a part of the literary and entertainment culture itself. It seems to me that if the producers, writers, and directors of the upcoming "LOTR" television series want to reuse Tolkien and Jackson in their own stories, then they only need find what Tolkien and Jackson reused from the extant literature and film archives and claim that they based their stories on those common foundations and not on anything that Tolkien had written or Jackson had filmed. After all, "There and Back Again" simply rips off Homer's Iliad (from Greece to Troy) and Odyssey (back to Greece agan). Practically all of Western Literature has done that. Tolkien did it twice: short version and longer version.