Warner Bros. Reportedly Looking to Turn The Lord of the Rings Into Star Wars-Inspired Franchise

By Patrick Cavanaugh

The Lord of the Rings fans were shocked by the recent reveal that Warner Bros. Discovery was aiming to start developing new films exploring elements of Middle-earth, with a new report claiming that this could merely kick off the beginning of a sprawling franchise, akin to Star Wars. This is sure to come as a shock to fans, as not only was the development of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power an unexpected enough expansion of the J.R.R. Tolkien stories, but expanding the world into all-new cinematic avenues means developing even more fresh stories for the franchise that are worthy of the big-screen treatment.

The Hollywood Reporter recently revealed, "Though there are no scripts yet, one insider suggests to The Hollywood Reporter that Warner Bros. hopes to turn LOTR into a Star Wars-like franchise."

Despite the overall excitement about the expansion of the Lord of the Rings brand, there are some inherent challenges that Warner Bros. will face going forward. 

With Warner Bros. securing the rights to develop more movies while Amazon Studios has the rights to develop the TV series, these two arenas won't overlap with one another, surely reminding fans of the times rival studios developed superhero projects that ran parallel to one another yet without crossing over. In other words, the films and the TV series won't feature crossover characters in the ways that Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have effectively managed to do.

The recent report also notes that, with The Rings of Power taking place during the Second Age, Warner Bros. will be developing films that take place during the Third Age, which would also allow for the inclusion of beloved characters like Gandalf and Aragorn. Though, as any Tolkien fan can tell you, the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are the figures' most compelling adventures, leading us to wonder how many ancillary quests could be explored in this timeframe.

What this means is that, despite an insider claiming the goal is to develop a Star Wars-like franchise, it's a bit murky what that means, other than potentially just being a surface-level, big-budget flagship franchise for the studio, even if it can't adopt intertwining storytelling narratives of the galaxy far, far away.

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Stay tuned for details on the future of Warner Bros. The Lord of the Rings projects.

Are you looking forward to the franchise's future at Warner Bros.? Let us know in the comments!

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