[Werthead]

Quote

As long as he gets heavily stuck in and insists they run without a script or planning, make shit up on the fly and trample all over my childhood memories it's all good

When someone says, "If you don't take on this project and get it going in the next month, we'll fire your entire staff of 500+ people, remove the project from New Zealand and hire Zack Snyder," there really wasn't much else Jackson could do. Lord of the Rings was bankrolled by one studio who gave Jackson 5 years and carte blanche to do what he wanted. The Hobbit was made by 5 studios whose rights issues (and legal dispute with the Tolkien Estate) only gave them a narrow window where they could make the films and one of those studios (MGM) wanted a trilogy no matter the cost, so unsurprisingly it was a fiasco. It's actually a miracle the films weren't considerably worse than they turned out.

That doesn't excuse all of the decisions Jackson made, but I think without the behind-the-scenes insanity, the Hobbit movies would have been better, there'd only have been two of them and the issues would have been more wince-inducing missteps (like the Slimers in RotK and Denethor's lack of nuance) rather than movie-sinking mistakes.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 07 April 2018 - 12:18 PM

[Macros]

Nah, no sale wert.

Too, far too, much shit that the little good doesn't even get a chance to shine through. Bombscare from start to finish

[Cause]

Slimers?

This post has been edited by Cause: 07 April 2018 - 11:15 PM

[Werthead]

Cause, on 07 April 2018 - 11:15 PM, said:

Slimers?

The ghosts who save Minas Tirith.

[Macros]

Probably the low point of the LotR trilogy for me, such an anticlimactic scene.

[Traveller]

'You and whose army?' Ugh.

I was up for this as an alternative to Jackson's vision. Now he's involved?

[worry]

I've never heard them called Slimers before and I love it.

[Traveller]

Me too. Creepy, undead army of dead warriors holding tattered banners marching through the dark, scaring the shit out of everyone with their mere presence and numbers; reduced on screen to a load of bright green... slimers.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 08 April 2018 - 09:48 PM

[Adhara]

I would be glad to see Silmarillion the Series, but I don´t understand the need for a LotR series when we have the movies. It´s not like they had been released in the fifties.

[Abyss]

Money. The need is money.



....not that i have a problem with that, since money brought us Game of Thrones, The Expanse, Altered Carbon, hell, even History Network's Vikings was driven by the channel's need to move into original programming because Mantracker and Storage Wars reruns only get you so far...


Point being, if anything, the existence of six successful (to use the term loosely) movies only adds fuel to the desire to make a tv series sooner rather than later. Now seems about right... people may have almost forgotten how bad those last three were.


Also, the relatively successfull co-existance of the various Marvel movies and tv shows, Avengers and X-men related, (and to a lesser ass-backwards extent, the DC efforts in that direction) have the production co.s/studios looking for other opportunities to cross-pollinate their media properties to make more... wait for it..... money.

The mess around King's Dark Tower just shows how easily it can go wrong too.

Anyone's guess whether this LotR thing is the next Game of Thrones, or Shannarra. I'm not wildly optimistic.

[Adhara]

After Game of Thrones fantasy sells. But there are plenty of fantasy books and sagas which will be a good source material for endless TV series. Even if the original books suffered from bad writing, we can get good scripts: I´ve ever thought that there are a lot of fantasy books out there with terrific ideas but bad writing/development which will be improved by a good screen adaptation. No need to go back to Father Tolkien.

[Abyss]

Morgan Lefay, on 09 April 2018 - 06:21 PM, said:

After Game of Thrones fantasy sells. But there are plenty of fantasy books and sagas which will be a good source material for endless TV series. Even if the original books suffered from bad writing, we can get good scripts: I´ve ever thought that there are a lot of fantasy books out there with terrific ideas but bad writing/development which will be improved by a good screen adaptation. No need to go back to Father Tolkien.

The need is for a reasonably low risk expenditure of mabzillions of dollars.


JRRT comes with a built in audience who have established that they will spend dollars on crap, and then buy the lunchbox.

That puts anything with his name attached way WAY ahead of pretty much anyone else except maybe the other guy with RR in the middle of his name.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 09 April 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Morgan Lefay, on 09 April 2018 - 06:21 PM, said:

After Game of Thrones fantasy sells. But there are plenty of fantasy books and sagas which will be a good source material for endless TV series. Even if the original books suffered from bad writing, we can get good scripts: I´ve ever thought that there are a lot of fantasy books out there with terrific ideas but bad writing/development which will be improved by a good screen adaptation. No need to go back to Father Tolkien.

The need is for a reasonably low risk expenditure of mabzillions of dollars.


JRRT comes with a built in audience who have established that they will spend dollars on crap, and then buy the lunchbox.

That puts anything with his name attached way WAY ahead of pretty much anyone else except maybe the other guy with RR in the middle of his name.

And I mean this is it...and as a Tolkien fan I can honestly say that this is something I HOPE is good.

And I mean, I can see and pull the good stuff out of the HOBBIT films, which I realize are not in the same arena of excellence as the LOTR films, and recognize the flaws. Like I was over the moon to get mentions of Gondolin, and Morgoth...

I'm in like Flynn for a billion $ Tolkien show, whatever it ends up being...and if PJ is consulting, that's even better IMHO...and if people like McKellen (who expressed interest), and Blanchett get into the game too...I'm beyond sold.

[Werthead]

Morgan Lefay, on 09 April 2018 - 05:44 PM, said:

I would be glad to see Silmarillion the Series, but I don´t understand the need for a LotR series when we have the movies. It´s not like they had been released in the fifties.

Rights. They have the rights to Lord of the Rings, but they don't have the rights to The Hobbit (MGM has them and lent them out for the movies but it was a total frigging nightmare and New Line aren't going there again) and they certainly don't have the rights to The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, although now the Tolkien Estate is more closely involved they may think about leasing them out in the future, if this project is good.

[Gintokian]

I imagine they're going to be releasing this on Amazon Prime? I guess they're hoping this will draw a lot of people into getting it but I wonder how well that will work out. I feel like a lot of people will just end up downloading or streaming it from free sites instead of paying for amazon prime. It's not like HBO where there are lots of good other shows so people don't mind getting it in order to watch GoT. It'll be interesting to see how well it does given they're spending $500M on the rights and first season.

[Macros]

Prime has quite a few shows on offer now, plus it gives you free delivery on all Amazon purchases (which is how I justify it to myself).

[Slow Ben]

Not excited, but of course I’ll give it a shot.

[Abyss]

Macros, on 10 April 2018 - 01:27 PM, said:

Prime has quite a few shows on offer now, plus it gives you free delivery on all Amazon purchases (which is how I justify it to myself).

I find that Prime more than pays for itself with the free fast shipping, even in Canada where we don’t get all the benefits the US does. That said, prime video gives me AMERICAN GODS, PREACHER, and some other stuff, so no complaints.

[Gintokian]

Abyss, on 10 April 2018 - 02:17 PM, said:

Macros, on 10 April 2018 - 01:27 PM, said:

Prime has quite a few shows on offer now, plus it gives you free delivery on all Amazon purchases (which is how I justify it to myself).

I find that Prime more than pays for itself with the free fast shipping, even in Canada where we don't get all the benefits the US does. That said, prime video gives me AMERICAN GODS, PREACHER, and some other stuff, so no complaints.

I guess it depends on how much stuff you order to make up for the cost. But I'm just wondering how many people who don't already have & use it are going to pay for it just to watch the lotr series, especially enough to make up for the $1B budget over the next 5 years.
I feel like a lot of people who order a lot on Amazon would have Prime already for the savings.

[worry]

It's not just about new customer acquisition. You have to offer existing subscribers new stuff too, just like any content provider does. Either way, Prime costs less than Netflix if you consider annual cost, so I don't see any roadblock to getting new people either. Let's not forget that the reason the rights were so expensive in the first place is because everybody wanted it. There was a bidding war. And to the question of whether people are going to watch this...of course they are going to watch it.

All that said, Prime is primarily a customer loyalty rewards program. It's all about sucking customers away from competitors for all they do and sell, not just the digital platform. The goal is monopoly. Amazon should be seized by the federal government, its profits distributed to the people, and Jeff Bezos imprisoned for crimes against labor. But in the mean time, let's not pretend that this isn't going to be a hit show.