The Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings

“We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years,” Zaslav said. “We haven’t had a Harry Potter movie in 15 years. House of the Dragon is a big example of that; Game of Thrones; taking advantage of Sex and the City; Lord of the Rings—we still have the right to do Lord of the Rings movies.”

At a glance, it could be easy for some observers to excuse this as media executive bluster—a listing of valuable IP that remains in the studio’s vault or at least licensed control. Social media had no end of amusement today as users noted it’s been nine years (and not 13) since the last solo Superman movie (and only six since the character appeared in the title of a film). Similarly, it’s only been 11 years since the mainline Harry Potter franchise ended via Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II. And, pfft, does he not count Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?!

But what’s interesting is the new WBD CEO apparently does not. The head of Warners is implicitly admonishing previous administrations for not making more Harry Potter movies… even after they ran out of source material novels 11 years ago.

And before Wizarding World enthusiasts quickly point out that J.K. Rowling authorized an official sequel to her seven Potter books via the two-volume play The Cursed Child, we must stress it does not appear as if Zaslav is speaking strictly of adapting Broadway theater.

Which brings us back to Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson’s original three-film adaptation of Tolkien’s magnum opus remains one of the high watermarks of genre filmmaking to this day. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, released between 2001  and 2003, is still the only major franchise outside of The Godfather in which all of its main films were nominated for Best Picture, as well as the only fantasy film to win a Best Picture Oscar (plus Best Director and a string of others). Twenty years later, those movies are so revered as classics that Amazon spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the television rights to Lord of the Rings—making an estate-approved prequel series that attempts to adhere to Tolkien’s appendices and general outline for events in Middle-earth’s “the Second Age,” if not Tolkien’s details.

Warners played this game a decade ago, too, when it turned the aforementioned Hobbit novel (barely bigger than a short story) into a meandering and ultimately disappointing trilogy. It was teh first attempt to remake Lord of the Rings’ success while at least nominally honoring Tolkien’s source material. After all, Tolkien ended his actual Lord of the Rings story for good and all when the Fourth Age began in The Return of the King, and the last of the elves and ring-bearers departed these shores.

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