I saw The Hobbit and The War of the Worlds: The New Generation at the weekend

[milliebee]

SEE THEM SEE THEM SEE THEM THEY ARE BOTH SO GOOD.

Spooooooooooooooilers!

Comments

[dmacabre]

I don't think The Hobbit will make a Thorin/Bilbo shipper out of me, but I'm looking forward to seeing it, nonetheless! :)

It's my understanding the the rest of the trilogy won't touch The Silmarillion or any of the Histories of Middle-Earth because Jackson and Co. don't hold the rights to those works. They'll probably be hitting the LOTR appendices pretty hard, though.

[milliebee]

Yeah, I'm not sure how far having the rights to it goes. They might be able to weasel in the odd reference or whatever without getting into trouble, but I do know that they definitely can't make a film of The Silmarillion/HoME. Sad, really, because I'd love to see those as films.

Even if they can't, those appendices are looooong anyway, and it wouldn't be hard to develop them into something more substantial (considering how much was added to the whole Aragorn/Arwen story in LotR).

[dmacabre]

I don't think they'll want to take the risk even with the odd reference. That's enough basis for a messy lawsuit, and Jackson's said in interviews that they're being pretty scrupulous about not including that material. The rumors I heard said the Tolkien estate wasn't altogether happy with how things went with LOTR, so I don't think they're inclined to turn a blind eye. Which is a shame, because it lessens the chance of seeing any Silmarillion material adapted into film... :-/

Ah, well. Like you said, plenty of stuff in the appendices to work with. I'm still boggled that there'll be three films!

[milliebee]

That's really such a shame. I can't believe that there'd ever be a more faithful or beautiful adaptation of Tolkien's work than Jackson's films. I'm sure they've got their reasons, but it does feels like the Tolkien estate is only keeping The Silmarillion back out of spite. 'We didn't like the films, therefore no one is allowed to!'