Every new franchise nowadays is more than just an ongoing series of films. We are long away from the days of trilogies or even long-running film series like Harry Potter. The Cinematic Universe is the template everyone aspires to be and that takes a visionary to push it forward. Warner Bros. already found their Kevin Feige in James Gunn and Peter Safran, but they have their eyes on another to revive their latest milestone franchise.
Just after announcing to the world that they have acquired the rights to make Lord of the Rings films during the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, insiders are hinting that they also already know who they want on board. After Amazon fumbled the bag, the production studio hopes to have Peter Jackson, the director of the original trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy, to bring this franchise back.
Not just Jackson, but also his writing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who are “precious talent” for the studio. The biggest challenge ahead though is if this new film franchise can exist opposite the Amazon TV series, as they try to avoid them blurring the lines between these two takes on the same property. That will be quite tricky as they had the film’s original composer Howard Shore work on the main title.
Amazon already has a 50-hour commitment to the series and is currently busy filming the second season. Showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne are still working on the project that was supposedly one of Amazon’s biggest shows ever but was given a rather mixed reception by the Internet and critics. It is still surprising they never went for the film rights, especially with MGM Studio now being a part of their expanding media landscape.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
