Will the LOTR movies be remade?

[pegkerr]

From an article I ran across:

More Lord of the Rings movies -- oh, yesss, preciousss, we wantsss them.

And within the next twenty or thirty years, we'll get them. Children who watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy will take their own children to a complete remake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's inevitable.

Most great movies will never be remade. We will never see remakes of The Godfather, or Gone with the Wind, or even Star Wars. But Lord of the Rings is different.

Why? Consider these five reasons...(read more here)

Hmm. Do you agree?

Comments

[cheshyre]

In some respects, I wish more books -> movies would/could be remade. Not necessarily because the original is bad, but for the same reason I like fanfic and fanart.

That said, I can give one excellent reason why they won't be remade -- licensing and rights. What kind of contract did New World Cinema/Peter Jackson sign with the Tolkein estate? It may not allow for any other interpretations until the book becomes public domain.

When Sara Paretsky signed rights to her character V.I. Warshawski to a movie studio, they were thinking of it as a potential new franchise. A female Spenser for Hire. The movie bombed, but the studio retains all film rights to the *character* -- not just that particular novel from which the story was based, but the character itself, meaning if somebody else comes up with a better way to film Sara Paretsky's books, she can't let them.
And I've heard similar stories from other authors.

[rabican.livejournal.com]

I'd like to agree, but I also think it's a little hard to tell whether a remake is viable - and too early, maybe. I mean, right now the LotR films are teetering on a precipice somewhere between pop culture and scripture - between an excellent but ultimately incomplete rendition of the novels, or a culturally important artifact in their own right. It sort of depends on what happens with the next generation, whether the films continue to serve as a stepping stone to the "real Lord of the Rings trilogy" or become a goal in their own right. Wasn't Gone with the Wind based on a book, or am I being stupid? See, there's a good example. If GwtW is based on a book, well, it's now also a film which is a milestone all on its own. Nowadays people don't tell each other to watch the film and then read the book, they tell people to watch the film, period. Will that happen to LotR? I don't know.

[cheshyre]

Another stupidity of the article:
Godfather and Gone With The Wind were also bestselling books with large followings before they were filmed. The casting of Scarlett was a huge issue, because everybody who had read the book (most American women) had a strong sense of who the character should be.
The fact that he doesn't think the first two movies can be remade, because people think of the films first, may be precisely the reason LOTR won't be redone for a long time.
Maybe if the film were poorly received (like Bakshi's attempts in the 1970s), the estate might re-license it to somebody else. But after this success? I doubt it.
We'll see other properties: The Hobbit, Simarillion, LOTR: The Musical.

But have you noticed that nowadays, once a book is filmed, that's it -- even if its crap? There are many poorly adapted books that I *wish* Hollywood could take a second crack at.
But that goes back to my previous post on rights and permissions.

Fiddlesticks.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I do not.

I think he gives short shrift to the characterizations in the films. Some characters could be portrayed better (Gimli comes to mind immediately), but the central roles, Frodo, Sam, Gollum, were pretty well nailed. Future remakes would have to reach at least the mark of those portrayals and that would be difficult.

I grant the author's second point (that Tolkien's material is deep and rich. I'll come back to this, though.

Point three: Effects, Schmefects. In the first point he tells us that Jackson emphasized plot and that the actors could be swapped out easily. Then he tells us that he will somehow be able to do the effects "better." How? Will better effects make Hobbiton look more real? Will they give us a grander vision of Lothlorian? Will they be able to reproduce or even better the production design of Jackson's films? I think not.

Point four: Sure, everyone has their take on what would make a better film. The screams for Tom Bombadil point to that. And yes, Tolkien's material is rich enough to handle more than one treatment. But to convince a studio to take the chance of investing in such a project, the fanboy-would-be-director would have to have a track record of successful films. If all he wants is to re-mail LoTR, he's got a long way to go.

Point five: Money. While we may very well see re-releases of the film with updated effects, a-la Star Wars, why would a studio put out extra money to try and recreate the success of the original films? Before any such thing is attempted, they would first test the waters with a re-release; that's free money for them, basically. No additional outlay of funds (well, not much) and a chance to gauge the interest of the audience.

Now back to point two: I think what we might very well see down the road is additional films that exploit the holes that Jackson left in the story. They'll be able to write complete films that deal with bits that were skimmed over. I could see a short film that covers the hobbit's encounter with Tom Bombadil and the barrow wights on their way to Bree. The legends and heroes of the Silmarrion certainly could be mined for new films. Proposals based on ideas like these would appeal to the studios as a way to capitalize on the popularity without the risk of remaking the entire films. They would be extending a proven property.

So, just like Tolkien's popularity opened the doors to fantasy fiction in the U.S., I think it is much more likely that we'll see productions of other fantasy classics long before we see LotR re-made. (I have a few idea about what those films should be, but so, I expect, does everyone else.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sean Connery as Gandalf? Those must be some good drugs he's on.

Seriously, I don't think the reason we won't see a Star Wars remake is because there's nothing more to the universe. A remake could be all about showing us what more there is to the universe. Could make it up. I think the reason we won't see such a remake (except for the obsessive re-edits of Lucas himself, dagnabbit) is that people love the originals too much and are too attached to their particulars. Who would direct another young actor to whine in Mark Hamill's tones about poooower converters? And yet we quote it, grinning sheepishly; it's ours now.

Just as every time I make potatoes, someone in my household inquires, "What's taters, precious? Eh? What's taters?"

Sure, Hamlet is a great play. But which of the movie versions thereof has captured the hearts and minds of something like 95% of Shakespeare lovers? None of them. Hamlet remakes get done because it's a great play that is not a great movie, and because actors feel that playing the title role is some kind of personal goal or career milestone. Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, for example, may as well have featured a button on Branagh's shirt reading, "LOOK AT ME, I'M KENNETH BRANAGH PLAYING HAMLET!"

The movies of LotR, in contrast, satisfy every Tolkien fan I know who can conceive of being satisfied by a movie. They don't really offer opportunities for individual actors' grandstanding. (Although the idea of "LOOK AT ME, I'M KENNETH BRANAGH PLAYING ARAGORN" makes me a bit queasy.) And most of us who love Tolkien were able to let go and love the films, too. I don't think we'll see a lot of interest in doing that twice.

[rvrjoe775.livejournal.com]

For me, Derek Jacobi performed the definitive Hamlet, although he was a bit old for it. No other version compares. Don't even bring up Olivier or Gibson. I give Branagh credit for casting Jacobi in his version as Claudius, and note with amusement with Patrick Stewart played Claudius for Jacobi's Hamlet.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, I'm not saying that no screen version of Hamlet has captured anyone's heart. Just that there's no consensus on it, no overwhelming adoration from Shakespeare fans for one particular film.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I said this as soon as the first came out.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I agree, but I do want to see Harry Potter as a full fledged radio play, with a new chapter every week. And Dan could play Sirius, by the time they get around to it.

[whapnoggin.livejournal.com]

I don't really buy the reasoning of the article. I think it's possible that some of these movies will be remade for other reasons. Not only does Hollywood like remakes (they know people who liked the originals will probably pay up again), but anything that is based on books that continue to be read will probably come up more than once. Most of Jane Austen's books have been adapated at least twice, for example. Even du Maurier's Rebecca which I would have supposed to have been treated almost definitively by Hitchcock, et al., was remade a little while ago into a TV movie. Possibly the failure of Gone with the Wind to be readapated means that the book itself has dated. (More likely, no one's proposal has yet been convincing enough.)

The writer of the article seems to me to be way offbase in talking about improved effects and a character-driven movie together. The way to do a character-driven LOTR is to take the movie off the big screen, lower the effects budget, and develop the story as a miniseries. That's the only way to fit Tom Bombadil in there. Possibly one could do an animated version, as beautiful as Spirited Away, or--ha ha--one could transpose the story to space! How'd you like to see Frodo trek from the planet "Shire" (where his people are terraformers who live in earthworks) to "Mount Doom," a hellish refinery at the center of the galaxy, or some such, in the valiant vessel Samwise (with intelligent AI, of course)?