Warner Bros. Television and the estate of JRR Tolkien are in talks with Amazon Studios - affiliated to the Washington-based electronic commerce company of Amazon Incorporation - to develop, a series based on the Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ novels.
Amazon Studios has been looking for a way to duplicate American TV network HBO’s success with ‘Game of Thrones,’ a TV series based on George R. R. Martin’s best-selling book series. The company may have found a solution: adapting Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ into a TV series.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is said to be personally involved in the negotiations, which are still in very early stages. No deal has been set, Variety reported.
Tolkien Estate, the Oxford-based legal body which manages the property of the late English author, is looking to sell the television rights of the iconic fantasy series to the tune of $200-250 million, and has approached Netflix and HBO as well. HBO has reportedly passed on the project.
If finding the next ‘Game of Thrones’ is the goal, it is hard to imagine a property more suited to the task than Tolkien’s series. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ tells the story of Frodo Baggins, a young Hobbit who is tasked with destroying an artifact called the One Ring in the hopes of saving the world of Middle-Earth (the fictional land in the story). The books have been adapted multiple times over the years, with the most commercially - and critically - successful adaptation coming in the form of New Zealand film director Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.
This is the kind of project that could bring Amazon Studios a significant amount of attention, and draw in viewers across the world. While Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu have all made huge strides as original content creators, Amazon has yet to score with a far-reaching, cultural conversation piece the way that Netflix has with ‘Stranger Things,’ an American sci-fi-horror web TV series with the first season released in July 2016.
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