Amazon, Warner Bros in Talks for LOTR Series Adaptation: Variety

yep where is Dave, its been ages.

I'm watching the video Chris just posted.  I put off watching it until lunch because it's an hour long, which got me really excited because I thought there'd be a lot of news.  Turns out there's a one paragraph release from Amazon, which basically gives a nicely evocative but very general description of all the stuff that happened in the Second Age.  They've got 5 seasons, looks like they may be trying to cover it all.

So it takes about 10 minutes maximum to cover that; the rest is him responding to comments and speculating. Largely a nothing burger, but it is worth seeing Amazon's first description of the series.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazons-lord-of-the-rings-show-is-about-the-return-of-s-1846049314/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the only named cast character is Galadriel? Are we going to see everything through her eyes as she quantum leaps between her different realities? Is she going to get together with her hand maidens to drink elf-wine and giggle about other characters like Sex in the City?

At any rate, it's clear she'll be a key part to the series despite doing jack-shit during the second age except dissing Annatar and maybe or maybe not being an object of obscure desire for Celebrimbor. So I think she'll be used as the audience's observer eyes, the central point of view character.

Or maybe Amazon just effed up when they mentioned her but nobody else (except "Tyra" and "Oren" or what-have-you made up names).

Dont know whether you have seen the TV show Fleabag? maybe there will be a sarcastic to camera dialogue, where she turns to us and rolls her eyes at Annatar's antics, gets drunk with him and then does the 'walk of shame' back to her crib in the morning.

More teenybopper casting? And for "warlords"? How can a warlord look 15 years old?

Some time ago it was mentioned that there were a couple mistakes on the Amazon map that was caught early on. Here's John Howe talking about it.

I did the map that was on Amazon. We did a big map of Númenor we made two mistakes. I was working with Tom Shippey, a Tolkien scholar, a very solid historian who reads Norse and Icelandic. He is really a serious scholar and actually knew Tolkien. Curiously enough actually met him when he was a student in Oxford when he was a professor in retirement. So Tom worked so hard researching all these elements that we needed to integrate into this map because in the second age Tolkien didn’t really give us a map of the second age. We have a map of Númenor and a map of Middle earth. We have a map of Middle Earth in the third age but it is not the same as in the second age so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where there were bridges where there were fords where there were roads what they would have been called in what language and we made two mistakes. The map went up on Amazon on Twitter on Instagram and literally probably 20 minutes later somebody was writing a letter to Harper Collins signaling that something was wrong with the map and it is extraordinary, so to have those resources at your fingertips is these people absolutely passionate about it is a real gift. So you want to be really careful with all of that and we made mistakes. If you imagine the map is this big [a meter] we made mistakes where something was this far [a centimeter] from where it should have been and someone spotted it immediately.

https://narniafans.com/2019/08/interview-with-narnia-conceptual-designer-john-howe/

{{ Only way I can see this casting of kids working is if they are covering a long expanse of time, and they are going to play certain characters when they were young, and then swap them out for adults in the roles for later stuff.
If these three are Nazgul as humans then hard to keep the sense of intimidation and power they have if we know they are bunch of kids under the cloaks, they'd have to surely grow up into powerful beings before becoming the Nazgul.
As to a female Nazgul, cant say it hugely bothers me but on the otherhand I am not impressed upon with reasons as to why do it. }}

Because after reading pages and pages of wicked men one longs for a wicked woman.

{{ Wel if I was going to make one Black Rider female it'd be tempting as a writer to tie it into Queen Beruthiel and her cats. Only problem as I think she was early Third Age, not Second- though I dont think we have an exact timeline for when all the Nazgul turned into Wraiths.
But she otherwise fits the criteria, she was a Black Numenoreon, she was cruel to people and animals, despised bright colours and adornments, made disturbing sculptures, had some sort of inherent or learned magic power to control her cats and use them for spying, and her ending is ambigous- set in a boat to sale of into the unknown. And she was despised for her time as Queen and her name was struck from all records. Like many of the other Nazgul we also dont know her name,as Beruthiel is a name given to her by the Gondorians and means 'Angry Queen'. And more interestingly writing wise we dont have a date of birth, she is supposed to have been born sometime between 700-800TA. But thats an assumption working out from when she was Queen and going backwards by a rough assumtion of her age. But what if she were born in the SA and had been given possession of one of the Nine? Extending her lifespan and giving her greater powers with time till she could use her Ring to control the cats, then people before they bung her on a boat to get rid of her? None of that woud technically break canon if they are making up the links. It doesnt contradict I dont think what we know of her.
So a suitable candidate for the female Nazgul role overall. }}

She doesn't strike me as having the type of power that Sauron was looking to capture. He wanted leaders that already commanded large swaths of people; Beruthiel had no following.

Tolkien doesn't write much about women leaders; all we get is Haleth from the first age. All the others are elves. Based on this if there was a female nazgul she would probably be from the far east or south that we haven't heard from. Though Beruthiel was a black (and hence southern) Numenorian she doesn't fit the leadership role.

{{ I dunno, manipulating herself into marrying the King of Gondor and becoming Queen is probably about as high as you could get in power for a woman in that system. She'd need to be clever and shrewd politically to navigate Court, ruthless in supressing rivals. I think you could write her pretty dark of character. Using her growing mastery of one of the Nine first to torture animals (she hated sea gulls too apparently) and then enslave her cats to her bidding, then eventually those close to her, whilst arranging suitably gruesome ends for her opponents that she horrifingly commorates in her distrubing garden sculptures.
If I was thinking with a writers hat thats a whole series worth of material right there extrapoltated out. It name checks a genuine Tolkien story and incorporates into its expanded version without actively damaging it.

Given just how much story they will have to clear invent to stick the bits we do know together I think the best can be hoped for is that it expands and incorporates what is known rather than contradicts, ignores or alters its original clear meaning or purpose.}}

We got all these previews from Dune a good year and half before release. Amazon's holding out on us.

{{ Not sure if they are just holding back to unleash the hype when all is done or if they are hedging bets that its best if we dont see what they are up to too long before release. }}

For a moment there I thought Chris had magically come through with a new trailer. But I think the clip makes the good point that the main focus will be the forging of the rings of power rather than Numenor. Though of course Sauron will connect to Numenor, but since that's the end of the Second Age, it seems Numenor will be more of a side story until near the end. The "recurring characters" also suggests this, since men have a bad habit of dying off.

Sounds like a fine angle for them to focus on, and perhaps that will allow them to tighten the story into something more coherent. The fall of Numenor is far more interesting though.

I think if I were doing it I'd have Eregion dominate the story telling at the beginning running up to the forging of the rings; then the story will become increasingly dominated by Numenor. Since they are planning 5 seasons though I think the first season might have but scant mention of Numenor. Probably only see them when they touch base at Middle Earth - leave the reveal of Numenor itself for the third season when they join with Gil-Galad to kick Sauron out of the North. Cliffhanger ending of the 4th season would be the destruction of Numenor, with the 5th season the establishment of Gondor leading up to the battle of the last alliance to end the whole series.

So here's the question for everyone: how would you map out the 5 seasons? Provide starting and ending events for each, the mix of different lands that we visit, etc.

{{ The short answer is I wouldnt. Theinformation available to go on amounts to nullet points, and even where Tolkien fleshed stuff out in some cases or wrote longer prose pieces such as on Numenor it lacks all the stuff you need to make it drama on television- like the dialogue and mos tof the characters youd need, and their persnal releationships. Even under the best circumstances of available info we have youd have to make 90% of it up to fill the gaps, and unless youre Tolkien thats a hard ask, if not imposible not to make an arse of.
Which is why I fully expect this at best to be a decent entertaining fantasy show but its own thing only vaguely related to Tolkien at a distance, and at worse a complete shit show.

But I'll give some thought to how Id do it, if I had to, at gun point or something! }}

Something that has occurred to me and I'm not in the mood to research it right now, but we seem to have conflicting versions of what Amazon has rights to: in some places it says anything from the second age, in other parts we're told the second age in the LotR appendices only.

I'll accept that Unfinished Tales is out, but in the Silmarillion we have both Akallabeth and Of the Rings of Power. Assuming those are out, what do we get in those two that we don't get in the appendices?

That's some work with a magnifying glass there.

Getting a bad feeling about this. Hope I'm wrong.

Well, remember that Stuart Townsend was booted out of LotR and swapped out for Viggo Mortensen. The original pilot for Game of Thrones was reportedly a disaster leading to the swap of Tamsin Merchant for Emilia Clarke. So I don't read anything into swapping out of actors early on.

I'm more worried by the departure of John Howe.