Amazon Studios has officially announced plans for a multi-season Lord of the Rings TV series. The news comes a little over a week after it was reported that Warner Bros./New Line had been in talks with the retail giant and streaming outlet for a TV adaptation based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved novels.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, the multi-season Lord of the Rings series will be produced in-house at Amazon Studios alongside the Tolkien Estate and Trust, publisher HarperCollins and Warner Bros. Entertainment’s New Line Cinema.
Set in Middle Earth, the series will tell “new storylines,” serving as a prequel to The Fellowship of the Ring. The deal reportedly includes a potential for spinoff shows.
“The Lord of the Rings is a cultural phenomenon that has captured the imagination of generations of fans through literature and the big screen,” Sharon Tal Yguado, Amazon’s new head of scripted, said in a statement. “We are honored to be working with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, HarperCollins and New Line on this exciting collaboration for television and are thrilled to be taking The Lord of the Rings fans on a new epic journey in Middle Earth.”
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“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,” Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins, said. “Sharon 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.”
Interestingly enough, Warner Bros. was famously sued by the Tolkien estate after the family and publisher HarperCollins went after the studio due to the use characters from the movies in online slot machines and other games. That lawsuit had been underway since 2012, with Warner Bros. later settling this past July for an undisclosed amount.
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The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which spanned from 2001 to 2003, is available for purchase on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD. The films, which were all directed by Peter Jackson, took in an astonishing $2.9 billion dollars at the worldwide box office and later spawned a less-successful prequel trilogy based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit.