Elijah Wood cautiously optimistic about new Lord of the Rings movies

Warner Bros. Discovery is all about franchises right now; they’re making a new Harry Potter TV show as well as new movies set in Middle-earth, the setting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. That story was adapted to the big screen by Peter Jackson in the early ’00s, and while we don’t know exactly what kinds of new movies WBD are planning to make, there’s already some trepidation among fans. Hopefully they don’t botch this.

All this is in addition to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a new TV series on Amazon set thousands of years before the story most of us know. Middle-earth is suddenly very busy.

Elijah Wood played lead character Frodo Baggins in Jackson’s original trilogy. Naturally, he has feelings about this upcoming reboot, or revival, or whatever it ends up being.

Elijah Wood shares his thoughts on new Lord of the Rings movies

Speaking to GQ, Wood sounded cautiously optimistic about the new films. “I‘m fascinated and I’m excited,” he said. “I hope it’s good. I’m surprised—I don’t know why I’m surprised because, of course there would be more movies. Obviously at the core of that, is a desire to make a lot of money. It’s not that a bunch of executives are like, ‘Let’s make really awesome art.’ And, again, not begrudging anybody because, of course, it is commerce. But great art can come from commerce. So those two things are not mutually exclusive.”

He’s not wrong; studios don’t make movies — especially big Hollywood epics like The Lord of the Rings — if they don’t think they can turn a profit. That’s so even as Wood claims that Jackson’s original movies “didn’t come out of that place. It came out of a passion for these books and wanting to see them realized.”

"And I hope that that is ultimately what will drive everything forward with whatever these subsequent movies are. I just hope that it’s the same motivating factor at its core, whenever they hire a screenwriter and a filmmaker—that it is with reverence for Tolkien’s material and enthusiasm to explore it."

Returning to Middle-earth is a big swing for WBD. I share Wood’s hope that they pay due homage to Tolkien’s fantastical world, but I’ll remain cautious until we hear more.

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h/t The A.V. Club