"New LOTR Amazon series and the movie trilogy" Topic

I was looking at my GW LOTR figures, which are really good figures based on Peter Jackson's choices in the movie trilogy, and it made me wonder what the aesthetic of the upcoming LOTR series on Amazon will look like.

Does PJ or the movie studio own the rights to the costumes and weapons that they chose for the trilogy? Can the Amazon show have Uruk-hai that look and are armed and armored like those in the trilogy? Will we see different armor for Gondor, etc.?

I know not everyone agrees with the artistic choices PJ made for the movie trilogy, but his version is now firmly planted in my brain and in my miniatures collection.

Plus it occurs to me that if I were GW and paid for the license to make figures, it would hurt me if the new 5-year series on Amazon looked completely different and therefore made my miniatures "obsolete" and less desirable by the mass audience.

And if the series IS different, say perhaps more "dark ages" in keeping with the books, will we see a license granted to someone to make figures? I would think that GW's license forbids them giving another company the rights to make any 15mm—35mm sizes figures from Tolkien intellectual property, though they could licenses someone to make much bigger figures or action figures and the like, as they did with movies.

I don't care how it looks. What I care about is the writing any good. Jackson proved that you can make a movie that looks good, but the screen play is so bad that the movie as a whole is crap.

+1 USAFpilot!

See the MTV skit of the pitch for LoTR IV – 'what if Frodo didn't actually throw the ring into Mt Doom'.

Be afraid

Peter Jackson was the GREATEST director ever – LoTR, and Peter Jackson is the WORST director ever – The Hobbit. Hopefully Amazon will not employ him.

From what I have read the series will focus on the 2nd Age.

I am looking forward to it, we shall see.

I believe the various costume designs, etc., are the property of Weta Workshop, and thus Peter Jackson, and so should be available for any project he is involved in. Of course, one might expect some "based on" variant designs in the new project as well— more to sell! My guess is also that GW will retain and expand their license, as they are the Top Dog when it comes to merchandising miniatures worldwide. The caveat is that PJ is rumored to favor the work of the Perry brothers (supposedly he commissioned a line of figures from them). That latter is just a rumor, not confirmed.

By the way, as a point of correction, PJ was not the screenwriter for either LotR or H; his wife and her writing buddy were. Their background is in romance writing, I believe, hence some of the more egregious moments in the H films (an elf flirting with a dwarf… ick :-P ). But PJ definitely likes big, schlocky action, which is how we got the ridiculous final battle and all the mess with "the white orc" in the H films. Blech.

I love the LotR films, but it ends there. I have a "meh" reaction to the upcoming series; I just don't trust the Hollywood element not to screw it up.

"The caveat is that PJ is rumored to favor the work of the Perry brothers (supposedly he commissioned a line of figures from them). That latter is just a rumor, not confirmed."

Really? I thought it was pretty well established that the Perrys sculpted a range of WW 1 54mm figures for Peter Jackson. At least they seem to think so. It's not on their current web site, so far as I can see, but a simple trip on the wayback machine yields this:

link

To quote the Perrys themselves from that archived page:

"Peter Jackson figures

"We think these Peter Jackson figures need some explanation. These pictures show the range of 54mm WW1 Anzacs for the Gallipoli Campaign we are sculpting for Peter Jackson's (Yes, that Peter Jackson!) private collection, him being a serious WW1 enthusiast.

"It all came about after a conversation with Richard Taylor, head of WETA (the company who are responsible for the special effects arms, armour, creatures etc., for the Lord of the Rings trilogy). After we had made a couple of figures, we sent them off to Richard, who showed them to Peter, with the result that we were invited to New Zealand to meet Peter, visit WETA and were even offered cameo parts in ‘The Return of the King'.

"We spent an amazing and unforgettable two weeks in New Zealand together with three colleagues from Games Workshop, two of which are now involved in the project. All the people at WETA, and Peter himself were fantastic and couldn't do enough for us.

"As we have already said, these are for Peter's private collection and are not available for sale but we will be showing them on the site as we make them. We don't, as a rule do commissions………………..but this is Peter Jackson!!"

If you want further proof, it's not hard to find articles on the figures and the diorama containing them.

There were several youtube videos showing WETA employees making, building, and playing various wargames and rpgs on unbelievable terrain boards.

At least one WETA employee makes and sells some of those terrain pieces shown.

I will link if I can ever find those videos again.

Remember the amazon series is second age, so set around 3000 years before lord of the rings. No uruk hai for several millenia yet and gondoruans only at the end and likely looking quite different. Though might match the econd age bits i. The first movie.

I was behind the rumor mill on what the show will focus on, so just now went and read up. It seems it will be late, maybe very late, Second Age, with Sauron an integral character. There is a 5-season minimum commitment, with apparently a contractual spin off series already in the beginning stages as well (and likely room for even more). PJ isn't yet involved but is in talks, to at least let them use some of his stuff from the movies in the TV series.

Since it is late Second Age and focused on Númenor, Sauron, and the leading Elves, the aesthetic will hardly be dark ages or the like, in fact I would expect the starting point to be the aesthetic of the movies, and the decadence and wealth of Númenor maybe creating even more over-the-top costuming.

@ Dennis: Thanks for the info. I personally had never seen any details, just read various comments here and elsewhere, which didn't really hit "confirmation" levels for me. So as far as I could definitively state based on what I knew when I posted, it would still qualify as "rumor." I will accept your link and regard it as fact. (I thought it was true, but I had to admit, I really didn't know. Now I do.)

Cheaper to rent the wardrobe collection from an old movie than to make it all up from scratch… ;-)

Peter Jackson was a pinch hitter for The Hobbit. Guillermo dropped out or something.

It definitely looks interesting. The only trailer so far shows the creative team. Looked like they had assembled a good group. I really hope it is well done.

No worries, Parzival. I'm amazed sometimes by stuff that's accepted causally as fact which upon investigation turned out to be nothing more than generally accepted myth. I've lost count of the many opposing lawyers who argued settled law that they weren't able to produce when challenged.

I remembered the Peter Jackson special figure range from when it was a current post on the Perry web site, and so went there to check when I saw your post. I was more than a little surprised when I didn't find it on the web site today-I'd boast about designing and sculpting figures for Peter Jackson to my dying day if it were me-so I did a quick search-I'm not saying I doubted my memory, but it can pay to occasionally check things you are certain are true-and found various references to the Jackson Anzac figures and the original post on the old Perry site.