Eduardo Oliferr notified me that Christopher Tolkien resigned as an officer of the Tolkien Estate effective August 29, 2017. You can confirm this for yourself by reviewing the Estate’s list of officers. The termination of his position with the Tolkien Estate was registered on September 4.
Tolkien Brasil published what they know about the transition in leadership in this article. If you need to read an English translation of the page you can use this link, but the translation is not 100% accurate.
According to Eduardo (I have not had time to look into this), the agreement reached by the Tolkien Estate with Warner Bros. (announced on June 29) may have stipulated they could or would work together in the future.
Tolkien fans have been sharing many news stories on social media and I am not going to track them all in this post. But I did read in one story from November 3 that the Tolkien Estate allegedly approached Netflix and HBO as well as Amazon. Hence, although The Atlantic speculates that Amazon is willing to pay out as much as half a billion dollars in advance on a bet that producing Middle-earth fan fiction will win for them, the high price tag could also be the result of a must-win auction.
With Christopher’s departure as an officer of the Tolkien Estate (which was incorporated in 2011), the long-awaited “rights frenzy” for Tolkien properties may soon begin. Early reports indicate that the first Amazon television series will probably be set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; I don’t know how much of this is still speculation.
What many fans want to know is if or when an adaptation of The Silmarillion will be produced, by whom, and in what medium. It could be done as a single movie in the same style in which John Huston produced his 1966 epic movie, “The Bible: In the Beginning…”; although they only covered the first part of Genesis in that movie, it consisted of several vignettes. Some fans are hoping only for adaptations of the stories of “Beren and Luthien” and “The Children of Hurin”.
Honestly, you could take just about any 1 sentence anecdote from the thousands of pages of Tolkien’s published notes and stories and turn that into a full multi-season television show. Amazon doesn’t need to have rights to everything in the Tolkien arcana to milk this material for decades. They just need the appendices and creative license to “fill in the gaps”.
See also:
- .@jeffbezos and Amazon Announced a TV Deal with the Tolkien Estate
- Why are Some People Sued over ‘Hobbit’ While Others are Not?
- Why Isn’t The Silmarillion Being Made Into a Movie or Radio Show?
- Why Does Peter Jackson Ignore So Much of Tolkien’s Middle-earth History?
Absolutely no respect towards Tolkien. You all disgust me.
I am horrified by this. The timing, the deal with Amazon.
Is this the moment when us fans of J. R. R. Tolkien and his ever committed and wonderfully talented son must walk away and cherish what we have?
Absolutely, yes.
Well, I think we’ll always have the books to cherish. But new generations have grown up within the Tolkien family and within Tolkien fandom itself. Books are no longer the primary source of mass entertainment. This was long expected in fandom. It’s a shock, to be sure. But we’ll transition through this just as the Tolkien family is moving forward. I don’t think the younger family members are being disrespectful at all of JRRT’s creation. He himself had decided early on “Art or Cash”, so he was always open to making a substantial financial deal.
To be honest, an adaptation of Tolkien’s creation in a “”fill the gaps” creation strikes me as more respectful, if anything, of the source material and may be why Christopher Tolkien had a more accepting position on this than for the movies.
It doesn’t goes against Tolkien’s litterary work (altough it’s perfectly able to go against the thematics and the motivations but that’s another matter) and can be seen as a good hommage : in fact, more different outlooks on Middle-Earth would be a fine thing if it breaks the mold of the movie’s aesthetics dominance providing with an array of differents ones.
For instance, I’d give its chance to a movie about the Battle of Dale with a script and a creative director that would not shy away to fill the gaps and to tell tales of their own. I’d probably enjoy it more than yet another retelling of a story more or less clumsy (both to divert too much from the books, and diverting not enough at times, which are both current problems IMHO).
I may be partial, because I particularily enjoyed the stance taken by The One Ring RPG, with both an aesthetic fitting my own perception (Early Medieval style), and the pretence note to “complete” Tolkien’s work but to provide their own subjective (including within Middle-Earth tales) creativity within a litterary frame which is not dogmatic to begin with.
This approach is, for me, perfectly respectful of JRRT and his tales.
In fact, what I’m picturing there is the tale of the creation of dwarves. Aulë doesn’t mean to be disrespectful and only wanted to emulate Eru’s own creation to pay an hommage and to answer his own creative need. And Eru didn’t taken as irrespectful but kindly blessed Aule’s dwarves.
We can all be the Aulë, being so admirative of Tolkien’s work and impatient to dwell in his world that we create things that we know doesn’t fit perfectly but hope that it would be liked.
Sure there will be crap. That’s unfortunatly impossible to prevent : but most of us and most of “new members” does like Tolkien, far from being disrespectful.
This ‘fill in the gaps’ is actually what’s worries me the most, since there is no guarantee that it will be good or fitting for the setting in the first place and adding to that the changes and alterations to established things it may turn into something so ridiculous like Shadow of War game (sequel to Shadow of Mordor) which contradicted or upturned all major lore points to the point of messing with fundamental rules of the world (though these games are more bastardization of material, adaptation of adaptations so to speak, movie tie-ins more than reflecting the book). One has to be careful when adding things that were not there is first place (if not then we get cheesy Dwarf-elf romance in the Hobbit films or rabbit sleds for Brown Wizard who is as crazy as he looks).
Satu informasi tidak terduga yang saya peroleh dari situs Middle-earth milik penulis dan pengamat fiksi fantasi serta budaya pop, Michael Martinez: Christopher Tolkien ternyata sudah mengundurkan diri dari Tolkien Estate sejak akhir Agustus. Mungkin itu sebabnya mengapa beliau bilang bahwa The Lay of Autrou and Itroun serta Beren and Luthien akan menjadi proyek terakhirnya (dan mungkin itu juga sebabnya kenapa Amazon cukup percaya diri dengan kemenangan deal untuk adaptasi serial).
Informasi lebih rinci bisa ditemukan di situs Tolkien Society Brazil (gunakan alat penerjemah untuk membacanya).
Bukti dari pensiunnya Christopher ada di halaman Tolkien Estate’s List of Officers, dan terlihat bahwa status Christopher memang sudah dinyatakan “Resigned” sejak 31 Agustus 2017. Alasan mengapa kabar ini baru diketahui kemungkinan karena segala hal yang menyangkut Christopher memang cenderung tidak diketahui orang awam, karena pribadinya yang agak tertutup. Setelah pensiunnya Christopher, mungkin “perang hak” dan diskusi tentang adaptasi akan kembali berkobar, termasuk untuk karya-karya lainnya. Tetapi saat ini belum ada informasi rinci tentang itu, dan saya juga tidak mau berspekulasi sampai ada kabar lebih jelas.
Christopher Tolkien akan berusia 93 tahun dalam beberapa hari lagi, jadi kabar pensiun ini tentu wajar. Lepas dari kehebohan yang mungkin akan terjadi, saya memilih mundur dulu sebentar untuk merenungkan semua jasa beliau. Saya sangat berterima kasih atas apa yang sudah beliau lakukan sepanjang karirnya. Berkat beliau, saya dan semua fans Tolkien lain bisa membaca karya-karya yang mungkin hanya akan terkubur sebagai manuskrip setelah kematian Tolkien di tahun 1973. Saya juga senang karena beliau mendapat penghargaan Bodley Medal tahun lalu, atas dedikasinya (dan seperti biasa, Christopher tidak bicara banyak soal itu). Tulisan yang saya buat untuk menyambut ulang tahun Christopher Tolkien yang ke-92 tahun lalu, buat saya, masih sangat relevan.
Have a nice retirement, Christopher. Thank you for everything you’ve done. We really appreciate years of your hard work and dedication. Where would we be without you?
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For those of you GEICO commercial inhabitants who are living under rocks, Amazon Video paid a cool (estimated) $200 million to $250 million for the television rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, announced the deal himself on Twitter. You don’t see that kind of activity every day. I read some speculation (or perhaps a rumor) that Bezos was directly involved in the negotiations. HBO and Netflix may also have had a shot at the rights before the Tolkien Estate went with Bezos and Amazon.
Who will actually produce the show? No idea yet. I’m sure a lot of production companies would love a shot at it. Fannish reactions are a mixture of despair and hope.
The Tolkien Estate, HarperCollins, and New Line Cinema (through Warner Bros.) all partnered on the deal with Amazon. The Tolkien Estate was formed in 2011 and it is separate from the charitable organization, the Tolkien Trust, which played no role in this agreement. Many fans seem to confuse them. Nor did Middle-earth Enterprises (formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises), a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, participate in the deal. Middle-earth Enterprises owns the film rights, under which New Line Cinema produced the six Peter Jackson movies based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkien, has resigned from the Tolkien Estate ahead of the announced TV deal with Amazon.
And fans wondered for a few days how or why Christopher Tolkien would agree to this kind of arrangement. Well, now we know that Christopher Tolkien resigned as a director of the Tolkien Estate effective August 29. Unless there was some dramatic scandal or family coup (and I very much doubt there was), Christopher probably privately announced his intention to step down to other directors earlier this year. The Tolkien Estate concluded a long legal dispute with New Line Cinema at the end of June, after which they issue a joint press release indicating they were looking forward to working together in the future.
The Tolkien Society has been reminding people that Christopher (who is approaching 93 years of age) remains Literary Executor for his father’s works. But in the last book he published earlier this year Christopher did indicate (once again) that he thinks this is the end of the line. He does not expect to publish anything else.
So there you go. We have an ongoing discussion in the SF Fandom forums.
People are now looking at this deal in a lot of creative ways. So far as we know, Amazon only has the rights to develop one television show plus one spinoff based on The Lord of the Rings. All indications so far are that they intend to do a prequel set before “The Fellowship of the Ring”. I am guessing it will be a show about Aragorn, whose adventures are only vaguely described by Tolkien. Aragorn is a major figure in The Lord of the Rings and he would have a lot of fan appeal. Don’t look for Viggo Mortensen to play Aragorn if that turns out to be the project (although I think that would be cool but he’s probably now too old to play a young Aragorn).
A lot of people who dislike the multi-billion dollar raking Peter Jackson films are hoping that Amazon will hire people who “correct the faults” of the movies. I’m not sure if you could find enough people to agree on what “the faults” are supposed to be. For example, Tolkien elves don’t have pointed ears but the vast majority of book/film fans insist they must (for no sane reason). We’ll probably have to endure pointy-eared elves in the Amazon TV show but hopefully they won’t all sound like they have smokers’ husky voices.
The fact that the Tolkien Estate is involved in this project may mean that many scholars who refused to work with Peter Jackson’s movies (and, believe me, there were many who did) will be more open to taking on consulting roles for this show. That assumes Amazon and their choice for a production company want any qualified Tolkien consultants.
We live in the age of posers like Stephen Colbert (okay, he is a REAL Tolkien fan) whose knowledge of Tolkien minutiae is not nearly as good as the media makes it out to be. Everyone is a Tolkien fan and everyone has read the books or seen the movies. They won’t lack for experienced film and television industry people (writers) who are already fans with their own ideas about how to handle everything. While I would love to be invited to help with the series, I am not holding my breath.
On the other hand, I now wonder how much of Peter Jackson’s incidental work on Middle-earth will be included in the production. With New Line Cinema on board that could mean that David Salo’s post-Tolkien Sindarin will be used in the show; otherwise, they’ll have to hire a linguist to come up with a whole new post-Tolkien Sindarin dialect. There are plenty of good linguists who could do the job, who are probably no longer worried about angering the Tolkien Estate if they take on such work. (No, I’m not one of them – I don’t do languages.)
I doubt the show will be filmed in New Zealand. It could be, but I suspect that Canada is a more likely venue. We’ll find out in time, I am sure.
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Perhaps it is time for a new generation to have a go. Frankly, artistic sensibility aside, that theme runs throughout JRRT’s writings: the whole saga is about endings and transition. Galadriel saw it, as did others, and so it goes. My biggest fear is that care and attention to detail will fall prey to profit-seeking corporate stupidity. There is great potential here for true art. JRRT’s stuff is not the pastiche of GRRM or Brooks. It takes time and concentration–attention must be paid in order to do it well and to give it justice. Let this get in the hands of an arrogant, deconstructionist director, and you have a recipe for artistic disaster.
Christopher Tolkien’s devotion to his father’s legacy is noteworthy, but if Middle-earth is ever going to expand beyond what it is now, other hands and other minds will need to take the reins. There are so many stories that could be told that would not interfere with the Professor’s ‘canon’. I’ve always thought a Witch-king origin story might be interesting: a Numenorean prince seduced into the service of the Dark Lord? Sure, Star Wars already did it but why not? Set it in the Second Age long before LOTR…
Some of us strive for “what we already know,set out fair and square without contradictions”,and not for any expansion by hands other than the original.If you want to exercise your own imagination don’t use someone else’s material.
The Amazon concept remains within the umbrella of the already-sold rights to TLotR,which means that whatever they make will derive somehow from what’s in there (including,to be clear,the Appendices).
But no adaptation can ever be good enough,and any alternative to encountering the story through the books always discouraged.
TV/movie content for generations: Do the “Real Lord of the Rings” – the history of Sauron’s involvement in Middle Earth. Not necessarily starring him, but there’s plenty of stories in his meddling in the affairs of other races, and the Elves’ creation of the Rings could take several seasons to tell. Then there’s the resulting wars, the Dwarves in Moria and their relations with the Elves, all that happened in Numenor, etc. All of that can be developed from the Appendices, just in the Second Age. Then there’s the more familiar Third Age.
While I wished Jackson and Christopher had been able to reach an understanding for The Silmarillion which, would have at least been based on an established story I respected Christopher’s commitment to his father’s work.
I’m very sure this will be a vehicle for Bezos to perpetuate his socialist agenda. It will be twisted in ways we cannot imagine. The only thing we will recognize will be names and places.