DBWI: New Line Cinemas Makes the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy Instead of the Foundation Series?

Apparently, back in 1997, New Line Cinemas was considering making three movies based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (I know it's pretty obscure, but you all are pretty knowledgable people regarding fantasy, so I'll post a summary only on request), instead of the Foundation Series we all know and love. However, marketing researchers found that the project couldn't escape the derision for fantasy films, and that few actors wanted their names associated with it. What would have been the consequences if the potential director, Peter Jackson, had sold his idea better, and gotten an LOTR trilogy made, nixing he Foundation Series? Would the rebirth of hard sci-fi have been prevented, and, without the humiliation of having his first Star Wars prequel get snubbed in favor of the unknown Foundation: Dark Age at the Oscars, would George Lucas have made the remaining two Star Wars films more adult and real? Would fantasy have finally escaped the opprobrium of "kid's films" and become a respectable genre?
 

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As usual. The church would say "its satanic" regardless what the autor intended. The book fans would say " the books were better". We would be delunged by rash of lousy fantasy knock-offs instead of cheap Sci-fi knock-offs in movie and gaming industry. And saying that it is Hard Sci-fi is a longshot.
 
I've actually read "Lord of the Rings" and like it quite a bit, but its hard to see how an attempt to construct an entirely new mythology by an arch-conservative and arch-Catholic Oxford Don could get an audience in the late 21st century. You would need a real openness to counter-cultural ideas to get something like that. And if this happens, there are lots of butterfly effects in other areas.

"Lord of the Rings" is obscure enough that people don't know that it is really just the last three books of a six book series, all about the battles between Elves -yes Elves- and two Satanic figures. The first part of the series, the three "Silmarillion" books, were published first and gradually built up an audience. But I don't know how you get all six filmed. And Tolkein is better known for his successful and unconnected childrens' books.

On the other hand, "Foundation" struck such a chord that there was massive pressure on Asimov to get the thing finished when he had reached a literary dead end and want to abandon it. Of course he did get it finished, but imagine if he didn't finish it or had gone through at one of his false starts at continuing it (there were several). You can't really make movies from a series that never gets finished.
 
Since Peter Jackson is now contracted with ShoTime to do a series to offset "Outlander" - I understand through friends, LOTR is the series he wants to do, we may see it, just not as a movie, which might mean more from the books included.
 
LOTR was a incrediblly complex work, with endless implications, half reveals, massive back story, and giant untold sections. I am very skeptical a worthwhile movie could be made from it. Foundation was complex and nuanced enough it made for a difficult movie.
 

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Well, they always could start with the "Hobbit". It would make a nice two hour (or so) movie, with an epic battle in the end. Surely good way to prepare for the main course. Further more they have Silmarilion with hundreds of interwoven plots. Take a few, hint others, let the director and script writer take it from here. Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, Nimrodel. You have material for dozen movies in there. I admit however one thing. LOTR would be costly because you would have to stage various locations all around the world and/or use excessive CGI (which would most likely fail at its job) to make it epic enough. Beleriad and Middle Earth were places almost untouched by human development. Sad fact is there is little such places now. I would bet that it could be well made movie without elves running around but with David Attenborough dubbing.:p
 
But if Jackson does it as a series....you don't have the problems of a movie. You don't drop subplots and people and it's less confusion. I hope it's true (that Jackson's ShoTime series is LOTR starting with "The Hobbit").
 
While Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit", it is not set in Middle Earth, and hobbits wouldn't fit in his scheme of the different races. There was a good animated movie made from "The Hobbit" anyway.
 
OOC: Tolkein started creating the world of Middle Earth and what became the Silmarillion during the Great War. The Hobbit started out as a children's story that got woven into Middle Earth. Tolkein wrote other fantasy children's stories that didn't get swallowed up by Middle Earth. I'm postulating ITTL Tolkein finishes the Silmarillion, gets it published, then gets the Lord of the Ring published as a sequel. The Hobbit remains something entirely separate and is not set in Middle Earth. There are no hobbits in Middle Earth ITTL. Of course, this POD means that there is much less interest in the Lord of the Rings, so no movie. But "Foundation" ITTL has the same cultural impact "The Lord of the Rings" had IOTL.
 
OOC: Tolkein started creating the world of Middle Earth and what became the Silmarillion during the Great War. The Hobbit started out as a children's story that got woven into Middle Earth. Tolkein wrote other fantasy children's stories that didn't get swallowed up by Middle Earth. I'm postulating ITTL Tolkein finishes the Silmarillion, gets it published, then gets the Lord of the Ring published as a sequel. The Hobbit remains something entirely separate and is not set in Middle Earth. There are no hobbits in Middle Earth ITTL. Of course, this POD means that there is much less interest in the Lord of the Rings, so no movie. But "Foundation" ITTL has the same cultural impact "The Lord of the Rings" had IOTL.
(OOC: Oh. Very inventive, but I rather intended the POD to be merely the failure of the OTL LOTR to get made into a movie, as evidenced by stuff like a Star Wars prequel released in 1999.)
 
If New Line Cinema has the rights to Tolkien's works, does that mean no PBS Leaf By Niggle miniseries?

(It was so bizarre, yet compelling; even better than their Gormenghast or A Voyage To Arcturus.)
 
LOTR was a incrediblly complex work, with endless implications, half reveals, massive back story, and giant untold sections. I am very skeptical a worthwhile movie could be made from it. Foundation was complex and nuanced enough it made for a difficult movie.
I think it could be done, but it would have to be boiled down a lot (for that matter, the Foundation movies were streamlined quite a bit from the books)... nix a whole Ark-load of minor characters who appear once and never again, nix all the references to things happening way over yonder that are never seen first person in the books; focus on the paths of the Fellowship characters, and it could be done...
 
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