The Sundarban
Published Apr 3, 2026, 7:01 PM EDT
Dan Selcke is a popular culture fanatic who writes and talks about movies, TV and books, the nerdier the higher. He is been engaged on news, opinions, editorials, interviews and podcasts for over 10 years. Dan has been published in The A.V. Club, Metro, Salon and in assorted places. He is interviewed actors and filmmakers from shows have Dune: Prophecy and The Rings of Energy.
When he’s flee out of issues to write, Dan operates a YouTube channel where he dives into extra depth on all issues movies, TV, and pa culture.
The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien are some of the most loved books of the previous century, and on the entire accountable for launching the high tale genre as we quiet are conscious of it. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is notorious to this day, but every strive to bring Tolkien’s world to the display since then has stumbled. The Hobbit movie trilogy, whereas profitable, stretched out a quick, charming book far too skinny, and 2024’s keen characteristic The Warfare of the Rohirrim made so few waves this could well per chance maybe be the first you’re listening to about it. Meanwhile, High Video’s Rings of Energy TV display has been all of magnificent, and this franchise deserves higher than magnificent. (High Video would beget been higher off retaining their other, superior high tale display.)
As it occurs, there is a potential out of this quagmire, but it feels have a prolonged shot.
The issue with smartly-liked Lord of the Rings movies
Can I ardour you in reheated lembas bread?
There are currently two Lord of the Rings movies in enhance at Warner Bros. One, The Hunt for Gollum, will seemingly be directed by Andy Serkis, who conducted the Ring-starved creature Gollum in Jackson’s trilogy. The movie will quilt an incident rapid mentioned in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, where the ranger Aragorn and the wizard Gandalf strive to observe down Gollum to discover info about the One Ring, which is ready to later trudge on to motive so important be troubled.
The other movie used to be presented in March of 2026: Shadows of the Previous, to be written by fashioned Lord of the Rings trilogy scribe Philippa Boyens, latenight host Stephen Colbert, and Colbert’s son Peter McGee. This movie will quilt a series of chapters from Fellowship of the Ring: the irregular interlude where Hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin chop by procedure of an customary woodland on their potential out of the Shire and bump into a magical man named Tom Bombadil, who sings plenty and wears yellow boots.
Both of these movies symbolize a stagnancy in The Lord of the Rings franchise: neither are though-provoking previous the fashioned trilogy, as another dawdling on aspect quests. The Tom Bombadil interlude has been chop out of practically every adaptation of The Lord of the Rings going motivate to the Seventies, mostly because of this of it is a outlandish diminutive lark that doesn’t add important to the tale. It isn’t rotten to be taught, but it lifts factual out. Meanwhile, the hunt for Gollum used to be left off the page fully, one figures because of this of Tolkien didn’t insist it value including.
The Lord of the Rings is identified for its myth sweep, but these seem have very minute stories to nefarious movies around. That rankles, because of this of there is an supreme attempting, myth, fully unadapted Lord of the Rings story honest sitting there begging to be brought to the display.
The Silmarillion is the only Lord of the Rings story quiet value adapting
Middle-earth, the early years
Credit: Dan Selcke
Tolkien started writing The Silmarillion years prior to engaged on The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, and despite the proven truth that he spent decades on it, he never quite finished; his son Christopher cleaned up his notes after his father’s death and at final published The Silmarillion in 1977.
The Silmarillion is basically an tale of the First Age of Middle-earth, when the immortal elves were mark contemporary, the darkish lord Sauron used to be honest a 2nd-in-expose to an supreme darker lord named Morgoth, and Middle-earth used to be plenty greater; a stout chunk of the continent sinks below the waves at some level of the closing, earth-shattering struggle against Morgoth, leaving at the motivate of the Middle-earth everyone knows from Tolkien’s extra smartly-liked tales.
So The Silmarillion is Lord of the Rings pre-history. It isn’t a stale new, but a series of tales spread out over hundreds of years. There’s the tale of Beren and Lúthien, a mortal man and an elven princess who descend in relish. To display to Lúthien’s father that they belong together, Beren and Lúthien shatter into the lair of Morgoth — a god-have being who could well per chance maybe close them with a behold — and arrange to design shut a precious jewel known as a Silmaril from his crown, giving hope to the other elves and men resisting Morgoth’s tyranny. Or there’s the tale of Túrin Turambar, a man who grows up in an elvish woodland, becomes the chief of a band of outlaws, fights a dragon, commits unintended incest, and then dies a tragic death.
Now these stories would make factual movies, and they need to quiet no longer beget to be shackled to Jackson’s fashioned movie trilogy.
The tales in The Silmarillion all gain one substantial tale, but they gain no longer flee together as cleanly as, declare, the three books in the fashioned Lord of the Rings trilogy. Whoever adapts them would beget to make tremendous alternate alternate ideas about what exactly makes it to the display,
