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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Lord of the Rings is a brilliant story, but I'd strongly prefer new material over another adaption.

Their series is a new series, it's based on stories from The Silmarillion and the large series published by Christopher Tolkien.

The title is a bit misleading, as Amazon's series is based on different material. It's presumably called 'The Lord of the Rings' because its title character is the same as that of the book and original movies.

As others have already pointed out, the LotR universe is much bigger than the Peter Jackson adaptations covered, and this will be set in those other parts of that universe. So it should be fine on the new vs. rehash front.

But if any producers read HN and are looking for other well-developed fantasy or science fiction universes with plenty of existing written stories that could be turned into excellent TV series, miniseries, or movies, here are some that I'd definitely want to watch, and I don't think I'd be alone in this.

1. Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" series [1].

2. Richard and Wendy Pini's "Elfquest" series [2].

3. Larry Niven's Known Space series [3].

4. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series [4].

As far as I know, no one has even ever started development on #1.

Warner Brothers announced they were going to do an "Elfquest" movie in 2008, but cancelled it because they thought it would compete with another fantasy movie they were doing, "The Hobbit".

One story from #3, "The Soft Weapon" got adapted to the Star Trek universe and became the episode "The Slaver Weapon" of the Star Trek animated series.

#4 almost got to the point of shooting a pilot for a TV series at Warner Broters. They had cast it and sets were being built. But WB requested so many changes in the final script that it was no longer really Pern (I've seen it described as a cross between Xena and Buffy). The showrunner, Ronald D. Moore [5], was a fan of the books and quit rather than going along with the changes, and the project died.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfquest

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore

This series is supposed to be set during the time of Morgoth. So the story is going to be completely different from LotR. I think they are just using the name as a stop gap (and maybe for PR) until they officially name the series.

It's actually set after the war against Morgoth. It's after the sinking of Beleriand, at the time of the ascendency of the Island of Numenor. This is the era during which the Rings of Power are forged, so they may well stick with the Lord of the Rings banding as it is going to be part of the overall story of the rings, and Sauron will likely feature as a prominent character.

Thank you for correcting me!

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