Amazon Confirms ‘Lord of the Rings’ TV Show, Are You Not Entertained?

Depending upon your viewpoint, it's either a blessing or a curse that J.R.R. Tolkien was such a prolific writer. Obviously it's great for fans of the author's Middle Earth, as they love discovering all the nooks and crannies buried in there. But for casual fans who enjoyed the books, liked the Lord of the Rings movies, and have hated everything since, it's a definite burden due to the fact that the universe is always fit to be mined for more material.

So it is with Amazon as they embark on a new adaptation of Tolkien's masterwork, though it comes with a bit of a caveat... It's going to be an original story inspired by Tolkien, but not necessarily directly adapted from any one of his stories. Buckle up for this explanation of what the series is going to be, directly from their press release...

“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon (Tal Yguado, Head of Scripted Series) and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”

Set in Middle Earth, the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. The deal includes a potential additional spin-off series.

Back when The Hobbit was first announced, it was going to split into two films, one covering most of the book and a second concluding the book and bridging the gap to Fellowship of the Ring. Instead we got three films and that "bridging the gap" thing was relegated to the film's final scene. So now we're gonna actually bridge the gap and maybe cover what Aragorn and Boromir and Gimli and Legolas were up to—wait we know what Legolas was up to, he was jumping up rocks in that last movie or whatever.

Sure, there's a wealth of stuff from the Tolkien catalog to adapt, but to paraphrase Ian Malcolm, your writers and producers were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. You can look forward to Lord of the Rings until the day you die. And then for several years after.