Embracer and WB agreement means multiple new Lord of the Rings movies
The road goes ever on and on. And on.
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During the same financial call in which Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav revealedMortal Kombat 12 is coming this year, he also mentioned The Lord of the Rings. Rights to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories to film were part of thespending spree Embracer Group went onlast year, and the co-chairs and CEOs of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, struck a deal with Embracer to make “multiple Lord of the Rings movies,” Zaslav said. “Lord of the Rings is one of the most iconic storytelling franchises of all time, and we’re so excited.”
Apress release from Embracer Groupgoes into it further without actually adding any more real detail, except to clarify that this is a “multi-year agreement to collaborate on feature films based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.”
“Twenty years ago, New Line took an unprecedented leap of faith to realize the incredible stories, characters and world of The Lord of the Rings on the big screen,” De Luca and Abdy were quoted as saying. “The result was a landmark series of films that have been embraced by generations of fans. But for all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien remains largely unexplored on film.”
These movies and this deal are unrelated to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an anime prequel that was announced shortly before Embracer acquired the Middle-earth film rights. That’s still due to come out in April of 2024, and is part of the same canon as the Peter Jackson movies, having one of their co-writers, Philippa Boyens, as a consultant. Mirando Otto is also reprising her role as Éowyn. She’ll be narrating the story, which is set almost 200 years before The Lord of the Rings.
Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh, the creative team behind New Line’s previous Lord of the Rings movies, toldVarietythat Warner Bros. and Embracer “have kept us in the loop every step of the way” and that “We look forward to speaking with them further to hear their vision for the franchise moving forward.”
Two decades after The Return of the King won 11 Oscar Awards, Middle-earth seems to be everywhere again. We’ve had Amazon’s Rings of Power series, though sadlyAmazon’s planned MMO was canceled. Still, there arefive Lord of the Rings videogames due in the next two years, including Return to Moria and Gollum.Magic: The Gathering’s Lord of the Rings crossover setis due this year too, and will be the first of Magic’s Universes Beyond sets to be brought over to its videogame version, Arena.
That’s a whole lot of Lord of the Rings, and I can only imagine that movie tie-ins and other spin-offs are due to follow. After the third Hobbit movie I thought people would be done with Middle-earth movies for a few decades, but what do I know?
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Personally, one of my favorite parts of The Lord of the Rings is the Mines of Moria, in which we see how the dwarves who returned to their ancestral home were punished, like their forebears, for delving too greedily and too deep. Just a thing that came to mind.
Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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