Fallen Angel
Earth Bound
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2013
- Messages
- 32,974
- Reaction score
- 98
- Points
- 73
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1202606519/
Warner Bros. Television and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkein are in talks with Amazon Studios to develop a series based on the late authors The Lord of the Rings novels.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is said by sources with knowledge of the situation to be personally involved in the negotiations, which are still in very early stages. No deal has been set.
The studio and the Tolkein estate have been shopping a series based on the classic fantasy novels and their assortment of hobbits, wizards, and warriors, sparking a competitive situation from which Amazon has emerged as the frontrunner. Representatives for Amazon and Warner Bros. declined to comment.
It is uncommon for Bezos known to be a fan of high fantasy and science fiction to involve himself personally in dealmaking for Amazon Studios. But talks for The Lord of the Rings come at an uncommon moment for the e-commerce giants video-entertainment division. Last month Amazon Studios flushed its executive ranks, with president Roy Price, head of scripted Joe Lewis, and head of unscripted Conrad Riggs all departing. Prices departure came just days after he was suspended on the heels of a sexual harassment allegation made against him by a producer on the companys original series The Man in the High Castle. Lewis and Riggs departures followed a week later.
But the pursuit of The Lord of the Rings is in line with a new programming mandate dictated this year by Bezos, who, months before Price departed, ordered him to shift Amazon Studios away from niche, naturalistic series such as Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle and toward large-scale genre programming with potential for broad international appeal. As part of that shift, Amazon canceled two series, Z: The Beginning of Everything and The Last Tycoon, and began shifting resources away from Lewis development team and to a unit led by event-series exec Sharon Tal Yguado. With Lewis departure, Tal Yguado was named head of scripted series, reporting to Prices interim replacement, Amazon Studios COO Albert Cheng.
The fact that a Lord of the Rings series is being shopped by Warner Bros. marks a thaw in the relationship between the studio and the Tolkein estate, which in July settled a massive lawsuit that had dragged on since 2012. The dispute, with Tolkeins heirs and publisher HarperCollins on one side and Warner Bros. which produced director Peter Jackons live-action feature film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and its prequel, The Hobbit on the other, stemmed from the use characters from the movies in online slot machines and other games.