Because they knew the “Rings of Power” would happen, and BOY did it suck.

If I'm honest, I think the real problem with adapting the Silmarillion is that, at its core, it is a mythology. What I mean by that is that it contains stories of vastly different lengths, intensities, subjects, themes, and scopes all working towards a common narrative. Since there's no point adapting the Silmarillion piece meal I don't think there is any corporate structure in the world today that would be able to adequately accomodate all of its facets. For example, as you suggest, I also think the Children of Hurin could be a great set of films. However, I think there are other stories that would be served much better by being long form television, animated shorts, 90 minute stand alone movies or limited series. I can also think of a number of places were having variable episode lengths ranging from, say, 30- 80 minutes would be beneficial. That means you can't have a unified distribution approach as modern audiences won't go to see a short at the cinema and releasing a fantasy epic straight to streaming isn't a fantastic idea. You would have to convince audiences to pay attention to multiple stories in multiple different places over a long time span. Under a capitalist system that disincentivises risk taking there is only one company I can think of that has tried to make anything with this much variability work and, unfortunately, that is Disney. Obviously the approach was a selfish one on their part to improve Disney Plus's prospects but, taking both their Star Wars and Marvel properties into account, in recent years you can see the development of a diverse set of formats similar to that required to properly adapt the silmarillion. You have limited series, genre pieces, shorts, event films, tentpole film series, etc. The problem is that, given their track record of late, I wouldn't trust Disney as far as I could throw a copyright lawyer and, given the diminishing returns we have seen from Disney managed IPs (Not wanting to make claims about quality but certainly in audience reception and retention) it demonstrates that the only corporate structure that could manage to adapt the Silmarillion is managed in a way that would actively harm said adaptation. The unfortunate truth is that, to properly adapt the Silmarillion, you would need to convince the estate to hand over the rights, find an individual willing to tie themselves to a vast multimedia project for decades as creative lead, give them funding equivalent to the GDP of a small country for production costs, fundamentally alter the way that the public interacts with media, and face the reality that by the end you may not have made any money. I'm just not sure there's anyone willing to do that in this day and age. It's not like the good old days where George Harrison could fund Monty Python's Life of Brian because "he wanted to see the film".

Remember when he said Tolkien needed the cash because of family? PJ faced the same situation with the Hobbit. He asked the studios for 6 to 8 weeks to fix the series. Studios said no. He had alot of people in new Zealand employed with families etc...Tolkien estates doesn't need big studios..go look at fan made films like Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope..the estate could help finance projects cheery picking stories to adapt. Give Tolkien fans what they want and make money.

It just seems natural to me that the way the adapt the Silm would be as individual stories. A Turin limited series by a really creative director would be great.

Amazon's DEI policy is basically quotas. So the casting choices in RoP were anything but color-blind.

Fun fact the name Tolkien is contained within the name Thorkelin who was the first translator of Beowulf. Cheers from Mercia the original Shire

My dream would be if someone like Robert Eggers became a Tolkien nut and got to adapt the Silmarillion into a bunch of movies or a show with oldschool Tolkien experts on board. If you watch The Northman you can almost get a whiff of what something like that might look like.

Poppi’s mother died. There’s some line in RoP that says her fathers current wife is her step mom

Tolkien Lore man, I've been lurking for years, now making a comment. To my mind I have a feeling of gratitude to you for having the testicular wherewithal to take the bull by the horns and say what you needed to say. To talk about these issues is to walk across a minefield. You navigated it skillfully.

I think you’re right, an adaptation isn’t getting made until Silmarillion goes into the public domain.

Pretty shrewd break-down of the various pitfalls of adaptation. I for one wouldn't mind seeing an animated version of, say, the Beren and Lúthien tale.

I don't particularly have a problem with there being a 'black' elf in RoP, but it is laughable to think, given their self-congratulatory DEI propaganda campaign, that that wasn't a consciously DEI decision.

I’d prefer to see it as some kind of animated production. Netflix did a Dark Crystal and He-Man reboot, and whether you consider them fluff or not, they really are a much better way to illustrate the kind of otherworldly qualities of a myth. Putting real people in wigs and fancy costumes before greenscreening them fighting bloated CGI monsters has been done to death and lost any kind of impact a long time ago.

Finally someone made a video on this. Haha. But an even better question: Why did Amazon decide to make a show centered around the 2nd age when they don’t have the rights to the Silmarrilion or Unfinished Tales? lol.

I think the trick to adapting to the Silmarillion would be to make sure each installment can stand alone, while linking up into a longer story. Take the nature of the three great tales and extend them to other prominent figures of the Silmarillion who _didn't_ get one of the three great tales weaved around them. One might hope the unfortunate implications of the First Age Easterlings being swarthy are offset somewhat by their names being pseudo-Germanic Ulfang, Uldor, Ulfast, and Ulwarth. I wonder more about the gender aspects of the Silmarillion. On the one hand, you have women taking more active roles than elsewhere in the legendarium, like Luthien. But not so much in traditionally male roles, except a few notes about Galadriel... Oh, and Haleth and the women of the Haladin, but how much focus do they get? Otherwise, the big female characters just, I dunno, turn into seagulls or whatever. I feel like the existence of the Avari makes a good excuse for diverse Elves. We know the Penni migrating far enough to later mingle with the Nandor. It's not hard to imagine some Avari migrating to equatorial latitudes, adapting to that environment, then migrating north to the Westlands, mingling with the Nandor, and boom, you've got Arondir. Of course people can say, "Elves have such a long generation time, how could they evolve that much even if they migrated south?", but you already have the same problem with how Primitive Quendian evolved into languages as different as Quenya and Sindarin. Clearly Elves, and even Men if they awoke with the rising of the Sun just 310 years before they entered Beleriand, undergo generational change different from that of real anthropological history. Edit: Oh, and just so we're clear, I'm not knocking on Tolkien for having women turn into seagulls. I think that's based and tradpilled. In fact I'm worried a Silmarillion adaptation will Surrender To Woke and have women _not_ turn into seagulls. 🕊🗿

You don't have to not hire black people to not be 'woke', you just have to have it make sense. As you said, some of the Easterlings were good guys. You can have more focus on them, give them a bigger role and dramatic defeat. You can have people from Harad coming to Beleriand for some reason (like Baranor from Shadow of War) and are good guys. But having black people playing, as you describe it, white people's roles, doesn't work in a movie, just like your example of men playing women's roles wouldn't work in a movie. People want it to look real. That's why they have to work so hard on perspective with the Hobbits and the Dwarves and not just say 'this actor is playing a character half his size'. So I wasn't bothered by having black elves because it's fine, you don't have to have everyone just as Tolkien described them, as long as we don't meet his parents and see they are white. But having a small group of Harfoots (Harfeet!) travelling together for a thousand years and somehow having that variety of skin color is just bad movie making.

I would suggest doing "The War of the Jewels", "The Childrem of Hurin", and "The Fall of Gondolin."

the only way I can see a Silmarillion adaptation working would be someone with the courage to make something like David Lynch's Twin Peaks: the Return. Obviously not in terms of tone or subject matter, but in terms of having long stretches of weirdness with no dialogue. You would have to forego commercial success in favor of being true to the material

Melon Geek, your wisdom is showing once more. I can add nothing to this very thorough analysis of why the Silmarillion cannot be rendered in another art form. It is, as you say, only possible that some epic stories within that tome be remade for cinema. But which ones will be chosen, at this point, is anyone's guess. And again, as you point out, the Estate has nothing to gain by taking a risk on such productions. Keep up the good work. Namarie.

I think Certain parts of it could be adapted wonderfully. The fall of numenor, angoliant and melkor and the two trees, the creation of the dwarves etc. It doesn't have to be an adaptation as a whole but some of the stories themselves being adapted could be really cool if done right.

In today's age, I would much rather they produce a full voice cast audio play with a full orchestra, etc. There would be far less chance of butchering the story than a movie or series. However, that will never get done until it's in the public domain.

“Market it as a guy who kills a dragon.” I’m in.

I second the suggestion for an audio play ("radio show," most likely in serial episodes, perhaps of varying lengths). It would be far less expensive to do, would go through fewer political/ideological traps and would therefore require less reputational risk, the show time in serial episodes would reduce the pressure to reimagine stuff to fit both a screen and a time limit, etc. Tolkien populated Beleriand in a way that would allow all kinds of racial-ethnic voice types and regional/local accents.

If it gets adapted, I'm happy for them to merge some of the more obscure characters. Feanor doesn't need that many sons.

As people have pointed out, it's impossible to put the Silmarillion on screen without it looking pathetic, because the grandeur of the stories would be diminished by trying to film them. I know the cliche 'Show don't tell' but sometimes telling is better. To take a small example you can easily write in a book "He/She was the most beautiful man/woman I'd ever seen" and the reader will obligingly substitute someone they personally find attractive, but when you film it the actor/actress can't possibly appeal to everyone.

I honestly would rather it just not get made and the estate hold onto it forever.

Guy Gavriel Kay

My brother in Christ, Arondir’s actor, emblematic of the race swapping you mentioned around @17:05, was ABSOLUTELY chosen in large part because he was non-white. As if they couldn’t find a single race-correct actor to play the part when literally thousands of would-be actors are chomping at the bits to get these spots. Orlando bloom’s FIRST ROLE was Legolas. Those people are out there. Their “crime”, such as it is, is their being white. I get that that may come off as obtuse or an overly simplistic explanation, but it’s also the truth. The people heading and bankrolling these studios are anti-white. I don’t get why people have no problem admitting that Hollywood in the 30’s and 40’s was racist towards blacks but now suddenly in 2024 it has to be murky and opaque when dealing with the question of anti-white racism. PS. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” IS the agenda. Lol you admit DEI influences their decisions but then turn around say their casting choices were color-blind. DEI is the opposite of meritocratic casting.

I think the major problèm is it isn't much of a book.

I wonder how an adaption would include the Lays of Beleriand when they didn't even want to include Tom Bombadil in the LOTR movies. Plus now it seems Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro decided that orcs are Mexicans.

Thanks for the commentary. I have never had a clear sense of what the Tolkien Estate's goals are. I assume that it exists under UK law, with which I am unfamiliar. I am curious to know more. For instance, who are the trustees? How do they pick their successors? To what extent are the trustees still operating from instructions in Tolkien's will (if he had one)? Who are the beneficiaries? How much are the estate's assets worth? If the estate sold rights, what would it do with the extra money?

If I could have the rights to only one portion of it, I would choose the downfall of Númenor.

honestly I see the shift in hollywood right now where the supposed tried and true franchise movies like marvel / pixar are completely failing, and great scifi/ fantasy cinema, though still under appreciated, pops up more then five years ago, such as the northman, and the recent dune movies which have the same adaptive problems that the LOTR movies have (perhaps even slightly worse in some areas) but are still great movies that are raking in money. I could see a near future ten or so years from now where Turin could be on the big screen, and I'd be absolutely hyped to see it.

I get this and you are not wrong … but imagine how much better even a Beezos-mangled ROP could have been had they been able to actually use the full Second Age lore. Finrod wouldn't have needed to give that awful speech about darkness being light or whatever that was, they wouldn't have needed to make up that whole Earth blight Mithril story, they could have used Anatar …

Maybe turn The Silmarillion into a manga, then an Anime series, finally an anime film.🤑🤑🤑🤑 It should work.🤞🏻

lol adapting the Silmarillion - or how to have your entire audience who isn’t intimately familiar with the work completely confused for 6 hours.

Thank God they cant touch it. I prefer the children of hurin as i imagine it in my head.

It’s actually kinda weird that they took a quarter billion from Amazon without selling the Silmarillion rights. Are they waiting for a bigger offer? How is that going to happen when Amazon didn’t get the material they’d have needed to do a good job of it. Don’t get me wrong, RoP has worse problems, but it’s easy to make an argument that they never had a chance to make something good to begin with.

Hollywood doesn't want to take risks but they are ok with gutting franchises to make them fit new social movements. Amazon Prime does have a corporate policy on diversity, they definitely used it while casting. The actors came out swinging against having actors which would fit the norse, anglo-saxon, celtic history.

Why would anyone sell the rights to Tolkein's works anymore after the atrocity perpetrated by Jeff Bozos with the Rings of Gargabe.

Surely the Estate completely fumbled the sale to Amazon -- not financially but in terms of curating Tolkien's legacy. They are supposed to have creative oversight, but this they have signally failed to exercise. Personally I'm far more interested in the Unfinished Tales material than the Silmarillion. I so, so, hope Jackson has the vision and clout to work out a deal to access the stuff he needs for current projects. A fool's hope, no doubt!

No one could do it justice

The rights issue might be more complicated than this, but if you're adapting individual stories, wouldn't you start by getting the rights to the stories which have been published individually (eg 'The Children of Hurin').

this might seem random, but what do you think of studio ghibli adapting it?

I do think that the story of Luthien and Beren is actually the one that can be made into a movie or several movies even. It has adventure, love, big stakes and enough connections to what people might already know for some appeal to an audience. And it even features a prominent woman lol. 🤔

It would be better to purchase the rights of some of those last 'novels'. Fall of Gondolin, Lay of Beren & Luthien , and Children of Hurin.

It was not color blind casting

Hopefully someone competent! (-_o)

I would totally love it if an independent studio bought the rights that isn't mainstream Hollywood, but thats only a dream that will never happen, only big names studios will grab it cause thats where all the money is sadly, and there are some really good directors out there with a style that would fit Tolkien and do justice, it just seems in my opinion Hollywood doesn't always hire the right people for it, now Peter Jackson made great LOTR films, i love them as films in their own right, but at the same time they more action and less of really what Tolkien was writing i think.

I think doing it like a historical documentary would be ideal. Don’t give it a story…just pretend like Tolkien did, that this is real, it’s been unearthed, and they are bringing the history to the world.

All I want is _Guitar Hero: Ainulindalë_

I hope they never do

silmarillion the documantary with great visuals and selected actors

I'm gonna make a full set of series of history of Arda lol

Because they saw Rings of Power 😅

Its pretty much how I'd love to see an accurate adaption of the How to Train Your Dragon books but I know full modern Hollywood (Its not just cause of the DreamWorks versions. Their own Live-action remake un-withstanding.) would never let it happen. First they'll sneer at it being a 'kids series' second they'll complain its 'too violent' (Amazon is doing Wings of Fire though.) and 3rd every character in the story is a white European and or a Talking dragon. Not going to pull the woke card cause I dislike that stick but its a massive crying shame like with The Silmarillion; myself agreeing that Children of Hurin should be put on-screen cause it really is phenomenal fantasy fiction, that I think deserves a wider audience. I just feel that How to Train Your Dragon as a book series hits many of the same cords that Tolkien hits with the themes of brotherly kinship, little people living in a brutal world yet continuing to fight anyway, not even mentioning what I'd view as some of the most Magnificent Dragons I've ever read in any story. I hear that there's supposed to be a Dragon Lance tv series along with a Elf-Quest animated show in the works but like with Narnia I'm just fretful to no-end how these studios could screw-up what I already think is progressive. Looking at you Dark- skinned Elf Quest Elves! (Love those comics.)

18:25 A colourblind casting... Is is possible that Amazon was sort of forced to pick diverse stuff? Yes. Is it plausible? I believe, it is not. Listen to what the actors of the show say in those promo videos. They talk more about representation and stuff like that than about anything else. Add here setting all-female directing team for the second season, that is being displayed as something very positive, and the picture of Amazon that is "not into politics" is quite complete.

until it becomes PD in 2043 in the U.S.

I don't think I would want to see the stories of the Silmarillion adapted. They're way too grand and mythical, no matter how they made it look it would feel underwhelming. And then there's the fact that they're simply too tragic to appeal to the movie-going public. So either they would be disliked, or they would be degraded and turned into a product for the popcorn inhaling masses.

You're given too much credit to any of the studios the way they How do you have DEI and put it into their stuff? Stuff works one way.

As other commenters have pointed out, the main problem with adapting The Silmarillion to film is that the book is a cycle of tales and legends rather than a unified narrative as is The Lord of the Rings. You’d have to pick one story and adapt that. Another problem is that all the principal characters are elves and humans-no hobbits. I think the hobbits really boosted the appeal of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Hobbits are cute and lovable. Elves, not so much.

Me, plz? ! Can we start a go fund me? I've got ideas...

I disagree pretty much with everything you said and I don't think you backed up your claims either... Fall of Gondolin, Children of Hurin would both make EPIC trilogies/TV-Shows Regarding silmarillion background issues for a movie: remember the prologue of Fellowship of the Ring by Peter Jackson?.... forget about the prologue in the silmarillion. I mean the prologue for the story of morgoth and the elves

I wonder how Mel Gibson would adapt the Silmarillion... I mean this man has a knack for themes of self-sacrifice and doomed endeavours

God you are naive; of course they have an agenda.

Because if they did that, it'd be the end of the Estate, there's no reason to really keep Tolkien, or his legacy around anymore when some random company in California where all the media moguls live can bastardise whatever they feel like from the Tolkien repertoire. That's why I refuse to see the new Hunt for Gollum movie or the Rohirrim Cartoon coming out with anything other then the utmost contempt. A butchering is still a butchering no matter who it's done by.

The Ring's of power is a garbage show and not at all representative of Tolkien's work.

It would be like selling the rights to rewrite the bible. Except that the Silmarillion is better.

First