The Lord of the Rings: new films in preparation at Warner

Ready for another Middle-earth getaway? Warner Bros. Pictures has announced the development of several feature films adapted from the legendary work of JRR Tolkien.

Return to Middle-earth

The information came through the voice of David Zaslav at a company meeting. The CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery thus stated that “several movies” based on the books by JRR Tolkien were currently in development at New Line Cinema, a subsidiary that produced Peter Jackson’s trilogy, released between 2001 and 2003.

This announcement is not a surprise: the franchise of the Lord of the Rings is one of Warner’s highest-grossing films and among cinema’s most popular. She has generated more than $5.8 billion at the global box office and is an iconic figure in the pop culture. Contacted by varietyPeter Jackson and screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens said Warner had them “kept informed at every stage of the process”. “We look forward to chatting with them and hearing their vision for the future of the franchise”they completed.

These projects are still green in their development: no director or screenwriter has been announced and few details are known. We only know that they shouldn’t be remakes of the trilogy Lord of the Rings and should focus on other Middle-earth stories and characters instead.

Tolkien: who has the rights?

JRR Tolkien’s universe was recently adapted into a television series by Amazon, The Rings of Power, whose first season cost a whopping $450 million. Broadcast on the Prime Video streaming platform, the series should span a total of five seasons.

The e-commerce giant has acquired the (restricted) rights to the appendices located at the end of the book The king’s return, which allowed him to tell a story set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the adventures of Frodo. This prevents Amazon from adapting other periods and works of Tolkien’s imagination, such as The Silmarilion, The Hobbitand especially The Lord of the Rings, whose adaptation rights are the property of Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic AB). Yes, it’s a shambles…

A package of nodes from which Warner Bros, Embracer’s partner, ultimately emerges as the big winner. The studio already has the animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim in the pipes, scheduled for April 2024 in theaters. These new film projects therefore complete a strategy that should extend the universe of JRR Tolkien both in cinema and in the form of TV series on the HBO Max streaming platform.

The trilogy of Lord of the Rings is available for streaming on the Amazon Prime Video platform.