Are they remaking Lord of the Rings?

The other week, we learned that New Line Cinema (who released Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies) has teamed up with Warner Bros Pictures (who released his Hobbit movies) and Embracer Group AB’s Middle-Earth Enterprises (who own a lot of the screen rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) to make new Lord of the Rings films.

This was pretty inevitable. The new CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, wants to focus on franchises and The Lord of the Rings is a big one. Do we need more Lord of the Rings movies are Jackson’s pair of trilogies and Amazon’s new The Rings of Power show? (New Line is also making an animated film called The War of the Rohirrim.) That’s an open question, but we’re getting them.

But what kinds of movies are we getting exactly?

Are they remaking The Lord of the Rings movies?

We don’t know whether Warner Bros. is literally going to remake The Lord of the Rings. All we know is that they’re making new Lord of the Rings movies. That could mean they want a retelling of the story of Bilbo and Gandalf and Gollum and Sauron, or it could mean they want to take inspiration from elsewhere in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium.

It’s probably that one. Here’s what Warner Bros Pictures Group co-chairs and CEOs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy said in a statement:

"[T]he vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien remains largely unexplored on film.  The opportunity to invite fans deeper into the cinematic world of Middle-earth is an honor, and we are excited to partner with Middle-earth Enterprises and Embracer on this adventure."

Thankfully, it sounds like Warner Bros. doesn’t intend to retell The Lord of the Rings story again, which is good because it’s already been done more than once, even well.

So what story will they tell? It’s anybody’s guess. The Hobbit has also been adapted, so that’s probably not a contender. Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show is about the Second Age, so that may be off limits as well.

The more fertile ground for untold stories about Middle-earth is from The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s book about the First Age. But I don’t know if they have the rights to that. Honestly, I’m a little afraid we’re going to get some prequel story about the younger days of Aragorn or something, but we’ll preserve judgment until we hear something official.

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