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

[William Cloud Hicklin]

What I still can't get my head around is the Tolkien family (less Christopher) selling out like this, letting their birthright be turned to crap for a mess of 200 million pottages. Certainly Adam's interviews from a few years ago suggested an attitude like his father's.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

What I still can't get my head around is the Tolkien family (less Christopher) selling out like this, letting their birthright be turned to crap for a mess of 200 million pottages.

Who knows what's going on in the family? Maybe there's drama unknown to the public.
That said, I can sympathize with Turgon after he heard reports Húrin had been released from Angband with honour.

'Even Húrin Thalion has surrendered to the will of Morgoth. My heart is shut'.

[Nerwen]

Any word on the title? I think it should be called A Game of Rings. With any luck, fans of obscure sports will starting watching it under the impression that it's a documentary on quoits, and thus be drawn into the exciting world of "previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings". Or not.

[Zigûr]

In all seriousness, I daresay it will be called "The Lord of the Rings: <Insert Subtitle Here>" to get as many people as possible to watch it.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

In all seriousness, I daresay it will be called "The Lord of the Rings: <Insert Subtitle Here>" to get as many people as possible to watch it.

If Truth In Advertising was a law, it'd be called Lord of the Rings: Quest for the Silver Pennies.

[Michael Murry]

Not "Lord" of the "Rings" (as in "onion"), but "Lard" of the "Fries" (as in "French"). Anything to convey the image of congealed grease at the bottom of the pan after deep frying left-over vegetables.

[Michael Murry]

If I may, I'd like to take off on Item #3 of Morthoron's "No-Wish" list for the forthcoming LOTR television series and possible spin-offs:

Boromir is the love child of Finduilas and Aragorn (in his guise as Thorongil while he fought for Gondor under the steward Echtelion II). Because the new show needs a Jon Snow moment.

Confessing my own age, ignorance, and indifference to what passes for "culture" in the "English speaking world" today, I had no idea what a "Jon Snow" moment might mean, so I did a little Internet research and discovered [source: Wikipedia] that "Jon is introduced in 1996's A Game of Thrones as the illegitimate son of Ned Stark, the honorable lord of Winterfell, an ancient fortress in the North of the fictional continent of Westeros." Since I haven't read the Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, nor have I seen a single episode of its television adaptation Game of Thrones, I immediately thought of Mordred, the illegitimate son of King Arthur and Morgan Le Fay in T. H. White's novel The Once and Future King (based on Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur), and subsequently adapted into the musical production and motion picture Camelot, among many other interpretations of the Arthurian legend.

Apropos of the typical "prequel" conundrum, where the audience already knows that the hero will survive every dire predicament and eventually (1) become King, (2) get the girl, and (3) live happily until he decides to depart Middle Earth when he gets damn good and ready, the proposed "LOTR" television series and spin-offs may have to take a page (or several pages) from Star Trek, The Once and Future King, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, about which Wikipedia says:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American romantic fantasy drama film directed by David Fincher. The storyline by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages in reverse and Cate Blanchett as the love interest throughout his life.

As most sentient carbon-based life forms on Planet Earth know by now, in the most recent reboot of the half-century-old Star Trek television-and-movie franchise, Mr Spock comes back from the future through a black hole and thus disrupts the time continuum, altering the fates of the U. S. S. Enterprise crew who then get to live different lives than those they already lived in previous films and television programs. In The Once and Future King, the "wizard" Merlyn lives through time backwards, as does Benjamin Button. The Actress Cate Blanchette, of course, played the Ultimate Elf-female, Galadriel, in the Peter Jackon LOTR and Hobbit films. Not to put too fine a point on the possibilities here: with the whole gang of "wizards" -- i.e., "Istari" -- coming back from the future (or somewhere "in the West") through a black hole in the universe, every character and situation conceived by J. R. R. Tolkien can now undergo an "evolution" towards an unknown and ever-expanding "future." Prequel problem solved. Thank you T. H. White, David Fincher, and J. J. Abrams.

In the new, alternate timeline, not only will Aragorn get it on with Finduilas (producing the illegitimate Boromir) while her much-older husband Denethor sits drooling up in his tower in front of his Palantir, but Gimli the Dwarf and Galadriel will manage to cuckold both Celeborn and Legolas at the same time. I think I begin to see how this will work ...