Are we going to witness one more Silmarillion Movie? Here is your answer to this question.
On June 10, 2021, Warner Bros confirmed a new Lord of the Rings movie in partnership with New Line Cinema. The movie will be titled The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim and takes place in the same timeline as Peter Jackson’s original “The Ring” series. A movie about the War of Rohirrim will be an animated feature film.
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is one of the most well-loved franchises for fans of epic fantasy, and not only. The Hobbit was also a success in its own right, but you can’t deny that this trilogy made an even bigger sensation with audiences. Naturally, many fans have pondered the prospect of a Silmarillion movie. However, as it turns out, the story with it is not so straightforward. It is unlikely that we will see a Silmarillion movie in the future.
Adapting literary works that are not the public domain is always complicated, and The Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien makes this task more difficult as he has made separate deals for different parts of his life’s work to be adapted for film and other media: some have found success in adaptation without permission from his estate but most of them aren’t.
Tolkien might have been writing The Silmarillion early on in his career, but he decided not to publish it while he was alive. After Tolkien’s father died, he took on the additional responsibility of editing and publishing his late father’s work as well.
Christopher Tolkien devoted his entire life to publishing as much of this father’s work as he could. Christopher Tolkien, who passed away early in 2020, never supported Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Lord of the Rings movies for instance which lead him to withhold movie rights with the family business while he was still alive.
The rights to J. R. R. Tolkiens work have been a matter of much discussion, but in general, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are able to be adapted because they were sold by J.R.Tolkien himself whereas Tolkien Estate has yet granted similar rights for any posthumously published work from the author.
Considering that Amazon wasn’t going to remake the original Lord of the Rings series, they had to put more focus on other stories set in Middle Earth. The Second Age is likely where these other stories would have taken place. This doesn’t mean that the TV series will adapt The Silmarillion, but rather that it is likely going to use material from earlier Middle Earth stories, which are referenced in either The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, and fill in the blanks from there.
While some fans might be disappointed that a Silmarillion movie isn’t happening any time soon, it is unclear whether such an adaptation would be a good idea. The Lord of the Rings is one of the richest fantasy works, but largely uses conventional narrative structures following a group of characters and focusing on one single goal. In contrast, The Silmarillion has a less straightforward narrative than Lord of the Rings.
Read More: The Flash Season 8 Release Date, Cast, Plot, Trailer, And All Latest Updates
Although the decade was once characterized by a string of bad or mediocre adaptations, newer adaptations often take much care and it seems that more people understand that changes don’t have to be strictly identical in order to make an adaptation just as enjoyable. Even though every great book must have an adaptation, not all adaptations are well done. There is a magic that will never be captured on screen and so those who created the story deserve to have their wishes respected.
Read More: Lady Loki In MCU: Everything You Need To Know
