It’s the defining dilemma of franchises these days: You have a huge universe to explore with an amazing mythology, but instead of jumping into with new characters, ideas, and places, you reach for the familiar to ease the audience into what one may expand. It’s currently Lucasfilm’s problem. They have an entire galaxy at their disposal with limitless possibilities, but so far all they’ve done is create prequels or familiar characters and storylines or launched a “new” series, but have totally connected and anchored it to the old guard in hopes of hanging on to the existing IP character for as long as possible.
READ MORE: Amazon Officially Orders Multiple Seasons Of ‘Lord Of The Rings’ TV Series
Now the Tolkien-verse is facing the same growing pains. While Middle Earth is vast with potentially hundreds of new stories to tell, Amazon Studios’ “The Lord Of The Rings” series is apparently going to focus on a young Aragorn, the character played by Viggo Mortensen in the movies.
The One Ring.Net, traditionally the most trusted ‘Lord Of The Rings’ fan source online is reporting that why have confirmed a young Aragorn is who the upcoming Amazon series will focus on.
It’s in a sense, predictable, but still disappointing news. “The Hobbit” was released to diminishing creative returns, and most reports suggested something narratively fresh.
The new untitled ‘Lord Of The Rings’ series will reportedly cost upwards of a billion dollars and for that amount it feels like Amazon wants to capitalize on the end of “Game Of Thrones,” and find a similar avenue for those audiences; Thrones obviously growing in scope and not costing a fortune to produce. Audiences will likely expect the same.
Speaking of “Game Of Thrones,” those spin-offs will reportedly focus on entirely new stories and characters, but do you have faith HBO won’t succumb to the same pressures of supplying audiences with more of the same?
No word on when ‘Lord Of The Rings’ will air, or whether original franchise director Peter Jackson will be involved (he’s apparently mulling it over), but is a massive undertaking, and no casting announcements have been made so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t arrive at Amazon Prime until 2020.
[BREAKING] We have confirmed from multiple sources that @AmazonStudios new billion-dollar #LOTR series will open its first season centered on a young Aragorn.
Let's discuss whats available and how this opens up Tolkien's Legendarium. A thread. #Tolkien
/1 pic.twitter.com/mfbkf4jyX6— TheOneRing (@theoneringnet) May 16, 2018
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