New Lord of the Rings films in the works at WB/New Line

[Pontin_Finnberry]

Hollywood Reporter - New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movies in the Works at Warners, New Line

I wonder what they will make next, says they aren't interested in retreading what Peter Jackson did already.

[ScionofAngmar]

Holy Cow! This could be great or an absolute disaster, but I’m looking forward to taking the plunge!

Happy to hear this won’t (at least at this point) be a remake of the LOTR narrative. I can imagine a film focused on Sauron as an antihero, which would be tough to pull off. Or the tales of Gandalf. If they have access to the appendices, this could open up a lot more -tales of Gondor and their kings, tales of the wizards?

The big problem will be avoiding the LOTR narrative, which is what people know and love, and I think the temptation to simply cash in on this with a remake for a new generation will be too great. Much like the temptation of the Ring for Isildur.

[DavidmeetHal]

I just hope it's not another excuse to include every racial and social real world group for representation. I can totally see it happening. If they follow the books it can be a good quality piece of work.

[Aranaan]

I just hope it's not another excuse to include every racial and social real world group for representation. I can totally see it happening. If they follow the books it can be a good quality piece of work.

I agree... the woke/cancel culture just destroyed the Amazon RoP series.

Hopefully Warned bros has learned something from that. Come to think about it, they might have, concidering they trashed the Batgirl movie (very good call if you ask me).
Give the real huge majority of the audience what they want and they will earn money. Listen to those who cries woke and cancel (a tiny majority), and you will have epic fails.

Just look at what they are doing in UK to the Roald Dale books... they have sensitivity readers going through them, removing words that might be offensive to some... gesus!

[Frisco]

I hope there's one member of every race in every scene just to irritate oversensitive bigots.

[Radhruin_EU]

I agree... the woke/cancel culture just destroyed the Amazon RoP series.

Abysmal writing and having a couple of prize n00bs for show-runners destroyed that series, the rest was just the hideous icing on the cake. We can only hope that anyone else having a go at Tolkien learns some lessons from that (like hiring writers who know how to write fantasy, for starters).

Just look at what they are doing in UK to the Roald Dale books... they have sensitivity readers going through them, removing words that might be offensive to some... gesus!

It's more than that, they've rewritten bits and inserted whole sentences as well. I agree with what Philip Pullman said about it, if Dahl's work is supposedly so problematic then they should just let it go out of print, not mess it about like that. I'm sad to see Puffin Books doing stuff like that - I was a voracious reader when I was a kid, and Puffin kept me well-supplied with stuff to read so I have fond memories of them. And Dahl's whole deal is that it's period, sort of (it was written like that, harking back a bit in its atmosphere), as well as being mildly unsettling and grotesque (kids love that stuff, I know I did) and you can't very well try to modernise that. And I doubt the kids would have been the ones being offended, if indeed anyone rational would have been...

[Radhruin_EU]

I hope there's one member of every race in every scene just to irritate oversensitive bigots.

How does making diversity look stupid like that - to the point of making the whole subject into a bad joke, a self-parody - help anyone? Away with such trolling.

[TesalionLortus]

OMG wow that's unexpected. Who knows what will happen. I guess they could in theory shame Amazon with a good proper take on places such as Umbar, Harad, or Rhun, + well-done diversity where it belongs and away from the West. Maybe some War of the Rohhirim styled movies about Kin-strife or other wars. Arnor vs Angmar? (Though it is more suited for tv series I guess?). There are many possibilities to explore than just hobbits, elves and a wizard. But adventures of Aragorn and Gandalf could work too, though it wouldn't really have such big stakes in it

[TesalionLortus]

I hope there's one member of every race in every scene just to irritate oversensitive bigots.

I propose an epic Kin-strife trilogy but the court of everyone (Gondor, Northmen, Umbar's haven, Harad) consists of Blacks, Whites, Thai, and one Asian, all in various skin shades.

Shush shush, it'll be a very meaningful story of blood oaths for the ages and Castamir and his troops will be the only prevailing whites of course with no woman in charge.

[Aranaan]

I hope there's one member of every race in every scene just to irritate oversensitive bigots.

Actually... its those who support the cancel/woke culture that are oversensitive.
We who oppose it, are rational in our arguments, but we are meet with such replies as you give. Personal attack = you loose the debate!

[Radhruin_EU]

OMG wow that's unexpected. Who knows what will happen. I guess they could in theory shame Amazon with a good proper take on places such as Umbar, Harad, or Rhun, + well-done diversity where it belongs and away from the West. Maybe some War of the Rohhirim styled movies about Kin-strife or other wars. Arnor vs Angmar? (Though it is more suited for tv series I guess?). There are many possibilities to explore than just hobbits, elves and a wizard. But adventures of Aragorn and Gandalf could work too, though it wouldn't really have such big stakes in it

War of the Rohirrim might hopefully break the mould there because that should fall into epic saga territory and nobody would expect the usual hobbits / Elves / wizard malarkey. And once people were used to seeing another side of the material, that might pave the way for more such alternative tales and yeah, that could include the Kin-strife (although that'd be quite some remove from the sort of story Tolkien liked to dwell on, because it'd be grimly political and bloody - from a modern perspective it'd be GoT-esque).

With Arnor vs. Angmar you'd still get hobbits (hobbits getting horribly owned by Angmar, but hobbits ). That'd be a good acid test when it came to commitment to keeping it real, having that company of hobbit archers falling in battle. And after all the scenes of Angmar owning everybody and Arvedui's unfortunate end, there could be the epic turnaround where Gondor and the Elves belatedly enter the fray and hand the Witch-king his hat so at least there could be an epic battle to round things off. (Complete with Glorfindel kicking butt).

I could see the adventures of Aragorn and Gandalf working too; you could get some nice interaction going between them, and bring in the circumstances of Aragorn falling in love with Arwen, Elrond being all "go off and prove yourself worthy first, young man" and lots of derring-do with A&G having adventures (and misadventures) across Middle-earth as Aragorn gradually grows into the role that destiny has in mind for him. Like what brought Aragorn to Moria the first time around, what happened and why his memories of the place were very evil, that sort of thing.

[Hephburz-2]

I'm just gonna say this..


For many a year, Hollywood and the like have had no issue with whitewashing absolutely everything in mainstream media, with white actors or cisgender people taking roles that might have otherwise been suited for people of different racial ethnicities, genders or sexualities, this wasn't due to a lack of those actors/actresses, it was simply because this was Hollywood and this was how things were done by the old white men in charge. Many a historical movie or fantasy has been whitewashed, Argo, Prince of Persia, Lawrence of Arabia, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Pan, The Lone Ranger, The Last Airbender - I could go on, and before the 2000s you rarely if ever saw any comments about white actors taking these roles from actors who might be better suited for them, due to appearance, gender, sexuality, or whatever other reason.

But for better or worse 90% of the population who saw these movies, or other movies that have been whitewashed, never once uttered anything about their choice of casting, whether historically accurate or true to the source material or not. Yet it amazes me how people on these forums can sit and hate on a show simply due to the fact that a show like Rings of Power decided to go the opposite route, if watching Lenny Henry play a harfoot in a fantasy tv show was really that jarring for you for no other reason than the colour of his skin, then I'm sorry but that says more about you as a person than anything else.

Did we really need another fully white TV series that would be watched by millions for the simple sake of staying somewhat true to the source material of a man who wrote his legendarium 70 years ago in a still very much racist time? Tolkiens works have literally been a hot-topic of racism since their publication.


On the actual topic of the thread, they should have stopped with Peter Jacksons original trilogy, the Hobbit trilogy was terrible, RoP was terrible (due to the bad writing and how 'clean' (graphically enhanced and modified) everything looked), and at this point they're just milking the name.

[TesalionLortus]

For many a year, Hollywood and the like have had no issue with whitewashing absolutely everything in mainstream media, with white actors or cisgender people taking roles that might have otherwise been suited for people of different racial ethnicities, genders or sexualities, this wasn't due to a lack of those actors/actresses, it was simply because this was Hollywood and this was how things were done by the old white men in charge. Many a historical movie or fantasy has been whitewashed, Argo, Prince of Persia, Lawrence of Arabia, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Pan, The Lone Ranger, The Last Airbender - I could go on, and before the 2000s you rarely if ever saw any comments about white actors taking these roles from actors who might be better suited for them, due to appearance, gender, sexuality, or whatever other reason.

How do you know we were just fine with it? It's quite offensive, frankly, when you put it like this, but other than fantasy specifically I do remember a few of those historical movies (Greece, Rome, Egypt) - you know, when they still made any movies set in those periods, true historical ones not fantasy mashups - that had their castings right and less jarring. Plus, it's quite different caliber to do that sort of thing to Tolkien, all across the board and twisting everything he has written to the point entire story falls flat, and do something like that in a one-off loose Prince of Persia game adaptation which still ended up having someone like Ben Kingsley in a lead role - and at the end of the day was a fun, well-done and conveyed movie story, which can't be said about RoP (both of which were properties of Ubisoft, game and movie, so at least not really dancing on a corpse of a long dead respected author who put much into making his world feel coherent). Also, many of us liked House of the Dragon and ended up liking the skin change that was done to a certain house because it felt coherently done, so try again.

But for better or worse 90% of the population who saw these movies, or other movies that have been whitewashed, never once uttered anything about their choice of casting, whether historically accurate or true to the source material or not. Yet it amazes me how people on these forums can sit and hate on a show simply due to the fact that a show like Rings of Power decided to go the opposite route, if watching Lenny Henry play a harfoot in a fantasy tv show was really that jarring for you for no other reason than the colour of his skin, then I'm sorry but that says more about you as a person than anything else.

It's shocking, I know, but most viewers are not very demanding, it's just a popcorn watch for them, so they won't complain either way. So it's a bit hypocritical of you to call us out on being critical where it's due. You just want us to become typical popcorn watchers so we don't care about any sort of quality and coherence at all, yes? I'm sorry but this is how true creativity goes to die, if everyone in a society turns that way. Also, Lenny Henry wasn't just jarring because of the skin, he was also an annoyingly written character with the entire Harfoot subculture being bonkers and behaving like a weird deeath cult, there were plenty of reasons to criticize this character and other Harfoots.

true to the source material of a man who wrote his legendarium 70 years ago in a still very much racist time? Tolkiens works have literally been a hot-topic of racism since their publication.

A well-versed professor with no small amount of historical and linguistic knowledge that he took care to use thoroughly for the creation of his world and its people - which is why it took him so long in the first place - happens to be the author behind Middle-earth. That's not all, he is also someone who fought and stood against the Nazis, disliked colonialist legacy and even wrote about things like blood purity feuds, with the bad guys worried about mixed marriages, going to extremes (or mistreating other races) and having to be stopped. I'm sorry he was that well-versed person so he didn't have random black people all over the place. Sorry to break it to you but that's not racist. There are hardly any black or asian people in my country as well, no matter where you go - does that mean the reality itself is racist too?

[Radhruin_EU]

For many a year, Hollywood and the like have had no issue with whitewashing absolutely everything in mainstream media, with white actors or cisgender people taking roles that might have otherwise been suited for people of different racial ethnicities, genders or sexualities

Those are in no way equivalent. The idea that an actor's gender needs to match that of the character they're playing is just intersectional gobbledegook. Likewise with sexuality. Stick to race and whitewashing, there you have a point (historically, at least).

But for better or worse 90% of the population who saw these movies, or other movies that have been whitewashed, never once uttered anything about their choice of casting, whether historically accurate or true to the source material or not. Yet it amazes me how people on these forums can sit and hate on a show simply due to the fact that a show like Rings of Power decided to go the opposite route, if watching Lenny Henry play a harfoot in a fantasy tv show was really that jarring for you for no other reason than the colour of his skin, then I'm sorry but that says more about you as a person than anything else.

Because in the context of a small group who'd supposedly been isolated for a long time it made no sense for them to show such diversity. So where did that come from? And because it raised the question of where that diversity went, in the context of LOTR. And because it led to obvious howlers like Nori and her mother being of completely different ethnicities and obviously not being related. And also because Lenny Henry was almost certainly cast because of his strident activism, rather than for his ability to act. Likewise with having extras among the Southlanders and Numenoreans who were of bizarrely random ethniciities, just to make up the numbers on the checklist that Amazon uses. It makes absolutely no sense to impose modern metropolitan-style diversity like that and in its own way it's every bit as objectionable as whitewashing was, because it erases any real sense of place, time or culture and the end result looks blandly generic.

Did we really need another fully white TV series that would be watched by millions for the simple sake of staying somewhat true to the source material of a man who wrote his legendarium 70 years ago in a still very much racist time? Tolkiens works have literally been a hot-topic of racism since their publication.

Racism had nothing to do with it, and you're talking nonsense. It's very firmly Euro-centric (and northern Europe at that) in inspiration and in terms of the culture it draws from because of course that's what you get if you want to reference and celebrate northern European myth and legend (and if you were writing for the then English audience, as Tolkien was). You might as well complain when adaptations of the Mahabharata or Ramayana have Indian people in them.

[Whohaz_Duhrang]

hehe There Is No Debate, These Fairies Are Living In La La Land Where: Perception Is Their Truth, Rather The Truth Instilled In All Hearts Of Men (absolute truth) Which Is God., Or The Flame Imperishable (which is Eru) For The LOTR Cosmetic To Reality

[Whohaz_Duhrang]

You Can Ignore It., But It Will NOT Be Ignoring You., End Times Are Nigh., For Myself, Or Maybe As I Foresee., For All. Either Way As We Progress To The End Of The "music" The Enemy "grows" In Strength, Or Should I Say Becomes Louder Than Previous, For It Knows (the shadow of the fear) That Its Time Is Almost Up.., Anyways Im Sure Many With Eyes, Ears, And Sense Feel Also The Pressure Of The Enemy, Just As The Nazgul Troubled The Hearts Of Men, So Also Is It Which Attacks Unseen. Gird Yourselves! It Strikes In A Moment

[Cordovan]

Since the folks here are unable to discuss this subject without bringing in politics and the overall cultural debate, this thread is now closed. Further discussion of "woke culture" whether about a television show or other subject will not be tolerated. We do not permit politics here.