As time progresses, more and more details are surfacing on Amazon’s ambitious $1bn TV show set in Middle-earth.
In a recent interview with Deadline.com, Amazon Studios’ new boss Jennifer Salke talked about the future of Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show, set to take place between the events in The Hobbit and LOTR, as our friends over on herr-der-ringe-film.de reported.
Peter Jackson’s involvement in Amazon’s TV series has been hotly debated and according to Salke, it seems only a question of how much Peter Jackson will be involved and not whether he will be involved or not:
The Peter Jackson conversations, right now we’re right in the middle of them. It’s like, how much do you want to be involved, how little? I know there’s been some discussion, and he’s even said some things, but as far as I’m aware, the latest is that we’re just in a conversation with him about how much or how little he would be involved.
This comes as great news for many fans of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations of LOTR and The Hobbit. What appears even more interesting, and an attempt to create continuity between Amazon’s TV series and Peter Jackson’s version of Middle-earth, is that Amazon thinks about shooting in New Zealand.
What is even more interesting is the extent of the Tolkien Estate’s involvement:
Despite all the noise around Lord of the Rings, the deal only closed like a month ago. But in the meantime, I’ve sat with Simon Tolkien for a couple of hours, and (Amazon TV executive) Sharon (Tal Yguado) has spent tons of time with them. She had spent the last couple of months meeting anyone who had said, I’m really passionate about it and I want to get in and talk about the show and what’s possible. I think you’ll see us honing in on a strategy in the next month, which might involve a group of writers. Clearly, there’ll be someone in charge, but it involves the estate and Peter Jackson, and there’s a lot of conversations.
The combined involvement of Peter Jackson and the Tolkien Estate in an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is unprecedented and suggests a most interesting outcome.
Read the entire interview here.
