While Amazon’s got Middle-earth on TV, Warner Bros. is working to bring Lord of the Rings back to the big screen. We already know two movies are coming, but Peter Jackson and the studio are already looking to dive even further into J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world.
During a recent Deadline interview, Jackson was asked how much gas the IP has left in the tank. The filmmaker noted “the appendices are gonna run dry” sooner or later, and he’d love to focus on Tolkien’s books that would “actually make great movies.” In the past, the biggest obstacle was Tolkien’s son Christopher, who edited 24 volumes of his father’s work and didn’t care for their cinematic versions. But after Christopher’s passing in 2020, the rights for those other books were up for grabs—Jackson specifically mentions both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales as material he thinks is ripe for film.
According to him, the younger Tolkiens now running the estate are “much more open” to other Lord of the Rings books being adapted. He and the studio are currently in talks with those board members to license rights to “some of the other books,” and it’s something he’s really looking forward to. Jackson candidly said it’d be nice “to get away from the appendices and get something a bit more meatier.”
Jackson’s comments are hardly surprising, given WB’s moves to dominate the fantasy market with Rings and a Game of Thrones movie. The question, as Deadline understandably asks, is whether fans will “go along with it” as they generally did with the Hobbit trilogy. We’ll have to wait for Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum on December 17, 2027, and Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past sometime later.
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