I actually think there's a chance Adam Tolkien might agree to an adaptation, if not the Sil then maybe Children of Hurin. I could see that as a Game of Thrones type mini-series. He said he doesn't like the LOTR movies, but he also said it was personal opinion and mainly wishes it was done differently, which to me means he's open to the idea of it he just didn't like the way it was done this time. On top of that, times are changing, and by the time the torch is passed it'll be changing even faster, and it might get to a point where it's almost inescapable. Or homes will have software that lets them make their own movie with the click of a mouse. Or you can hire someone to do it. Or it'll be Adam Tolkien's son who resurrects the series. Anything's possible...

I do want to clarify, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Christopher Tolkien and do not wish any of this to happen any time soon. The man is a genius and I am beyond grateful for his efforts. He is easily one of the best and most influential people in my life. I absolutely understand his hesitation to hand over these works. I do wish HOME had more ebooks, that's not so bad, right?! But hey...you're still the man.

Galin, I'm sorry. I still stand by everything I said with no regrets, but I recognize you're not all bad, and I def think you're one of the most knowledgeable Tolkien fans I'll ever meet. It IS possible you're CRT though...it would fit so perfectly.

Great idea Balrogs. The Silmarillion is a perfect for a serialisation, like Game Of Thrones.

I don't know about a stand alone Movie of TCOH because it will require a hell of a lot of back story. So long as the production values are up there with Weta, I'd be very excited to see a very long series.

Oh yes. Someone (hopefully a Tolkien) should create a master Canon historical history which can lead up smoothly with the Movies. I for one would love to see a quality production.

Do my eyes deceive me?! Can it be so?! Galin that's one of my favorite posts of yours I've ever read, just what I needed to hear and my day will now be awesome, thank you. And I think I have seen parts of that BD thread, or another; hence the "people on other forums say the same" comment.

Sorry Brego, I should be more clear. I actually think Children of Hurin alone would make a good GoT-esque series, probably just 1 season. It's got enough betrayal, murder, taboo topics, and villains in it...plus a dragon. I'm actually torn on if the Sil itself could ever be done justice in any format. Rather individual stories themselves should be done over the next 100 years. For instance a movie focused on the rise of Gondolin in 10-20 years. I think that could be done in one movie, if not two. Then 10-20 years later even "Of Beren and Luthien," maybe mixed in with the creation and transport of the Silmarils to ME. Leave two of them mysterious and only focus on the one Beren is after, something like that. Tolkien doesn't have many happy endings, but I think the few he does have would make the best movies (like ROTK). Gondolin I guess isn't that happy ha, but....it's a good story nonetheless.

I'm afraid if they did the entire Sil, whether it was over many seasons of a series or a movie or three over a handful of years...it will fall apart and become a joke. Only 4 seasons in and GoT isn't even close to the books anymore. I don't care as much with Martin (plus his world isn't quite as lengthy), but I don't think I want such a deviation with Tolkien. it's just too grand in scope. That's why there aren't any good movies about the Bible, Charleton Heston aside (which is still a rather cheesy movie but a classic nonetheless). But to make a Sil series or movie from start to finish....I dunno. Snippets maybe here and there, but not all of it. Honestly, in 10-20 years, I see the most likely translation of the Silmarillion to be as a video game, but probably not even that. And on that note, this might be a bad idea saying this, but the copyright stuff doesn't just apply to PJ. They have LOTR video games out there that are actually quite good, but are literally 5% accurate to the world. Several take place in the north regions, which are barely mentioned in the LOTR/Hobbit, so they basically made up an entire new story. Imagine if THESE guys had full access and didn't have to make things up and how that might introduce a whole new generation to the REAL world of Tolkien. I'm sure there are plenty of anti-video game people on here, but let's be real here and go back to the facts: times are changing and video games are now the same thing as a pop up book when you were young. I personally would've loved a Tolkien pop-up book, just like kids these days would love a Tolkien video game....and they do actually. I just wish those were accurate...

And ya know Galin, personally, I don't think that's really fair to the fans to put something like that in a will. He can maintain that effort while he's alive, but to set it in stone like that actually seems cruel and damaging to the image. I do 100% agree it's his efforts and not his fathers (who actually suggested his openness to seeing his works grow, not be limited) and he has every right to do so, but there are literally MILLIONS(1,000,000s) of people out there who want to experience more Tolkien and, frankly, don't like to or just aren't good readers, particularly for something as complex and thorough as Tolkien or The Sil. Everyone should know Tolkien, his stories are full of life lessons and are just plain COOL. You shouldn't have to "earn" the right to know his world by forcing yourself to do something you don't enjoy. In theory it seems noble, but in the long term, as in 50+ years from now, it's doing nothing but hurting the name of Tolkien. Sadly this isn't 1950 anymore and now the most mainstream medium is visual technology, so I fear if he doesn't learn to relinquish this iron grip, Tolkien will fade into complete obscurity, becoming another generic name in the annals of history that kids find boring. Everyone'll know the name Tolkien and that he wrote a book or something, but then their ADD kicks in and they want more Katy Perry. I'd rather them see an updated, slightly deviated version of Children of Hurin than not know Tolkien at all...

And I think I have seen parts of that BD thread, or another; hence the "people on other forums say the same" comment.

Which other thread do you mean?

Emoticon or not (not sure that's the right term I'm using here) to generally say people (plural) on other forums say "the same" would, I think be a misrepresentation of what happened between Doug and me in the thread you are referring to here...

... especially given that I did not know Doug felt uneasy about the fact that I was responding in a piecemeal way, until he said so. If I recall correctly he wasn't even an active member of BD at the time, and so I alerted him over to Barrow Downs out of fairness, thinking that he might want to reply there...

... and when Doug spoke up about his concern at BD, I stopped and he thanked me in PM.

And his problem (unless he says otherwise, but I have no reason to think so) was that I was looking at each example one at a time and posting my comments when I got around to posting them.... sometimes weeks later... which admittedly kept bumping the thread.

Doug had looked at example after example in his published book, criticizing Christopher Tolkien about the same point (at the moment I'll not go into what that criticism is) each time he brought up an example (in his opinion, an example of his larger criticism)... 

... and I was doing a similar thing on line, looking at the very same examples and suggesting alternative ways one might view the very same material...

... which of course, adds up to criticism of parts of Doug's book, noting that his book contains plenty of criticism of the constructed Silmarillion. No problem, and Doug surely expected criticism of his book, especially about the point concerned. And he received plenty of criticism on line and in print.

Fair is fair (why can't another person look at all the same examples and arrive at a different conclusion), and yet I stopped because Doug felt that since I was taking time between each example, and then posting my opinion -- which again, kept bumping the thread of course -- it made him feel like I was just doing it to bother him, or stalk him.

Which I wasn't. I have a life outside of Tolkien chat, and it took time to really look at these examples in detail.

But as I had no intention to make Doug feel as he did, I stopped. My own alternative could have ben to make the larger argument all at once, and I bet that would have been fine with Doug.

That one example is, in my opinion, quite different from the barbs you were tossing earlier. And I've been posting on line for years.

A good example of how details matter.

For the content of the debate, it's on line. There was a discussion at Doug's own website involving Tolkien scholar Carl Hostetter as well, but Doug expected this section of his book to be controversial...

... and it was

Well Balrogs, what I'm going to say is that it was you who chose not to drop it after I had moved on. Even after you stated you liked my last post about CJRT and his will (and a Children of Hurin film and Jane Seymour as Arwen)...

...  you quoted your earlier comment and said that the Barrow Downs example with Doug was part of the reason for your earlier opinion, and vaguely tossed in "or another" thread.

Thus bringing up again your same earlier opinion as if the BD thread supports it. That's not dropping the matter.

And here you begin with your subjective opinion yet again (that it sounds pretty similar to you).

Actually moving on is what I was doing in the post you initially thanked me for... 

... again simply read the thread to see who began this rehash. And you're tossing in an opinion about that thread in the same post that you ask me to just drop it.

:shrug:

Brego, I wondered about that myself too. 

That said, I don't have much hope for a Children of Hurin film in my lifetime, but it's not a great concern for me.

It might not be "canon" to my mind, but the one volume Children of Hurin has the right kind of impact in general -- meaning it is written to be read as a story, rather than as presented in HME and UT, with scholarly commentary -- the kind of impact JRRT intended, I would say.

Balrogs now I get you. Continuity for me is a big thing and although I respect your idea, for me even a series of short films will surfice. It's just such a huge tale and would need flash back and possibly forwards. In my mind it would take at least fourty hours of screen time, neatly split into sgments or chapters. Tolkien once said that TLOTR was unfilmable, well if anything is it's the entire history of M.E....

I still think Weta need to be involved, whoever produces it. And it must be shot in NZ. Other than Howard Shore's truly beautiful music, it's Weta's (usually practacle) effects and environments that truly bought ME to life for me.

And yes Galin. I think once our beloved CT is gone there will be a few interested family members who may or may not want envolvment.

I thought some of you might find this interesting...

https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/i-have-recut-peter-jacksons-hobbit-trilogy-into-a-single-4-hour-film/

It's basically a modified version of the Hobbit trilogy edited down into one 4 hour film, essentially cutting the total film time in half. Here's a list of what was edited:

• The investigation of Dol Guldor has been completely excised, including the appearances of Radagast, Saruman and Galadriel. This was the most obvious cut, and the easiest to carry out (a testament to its irrelevance to the main narrative). Like the novel, Gandalf abruptly disappears on the borders of Mirkwood, and then reappears at the siege of the Lonely Mountain with tidings of an orc army.

• The Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle has also been removed. Indeed, Tauriel is no longer a character in the film, and Legolas only gets a brief cameo during the Mirkwood arrest. This was the next clear candidate for elimination, given how little plot value and personality these two woodland sprites added to the story. Dwarves are way more fun to hang out with anyway. :P

• The Pale Orc subplot is vastly trimmed down. Azog is obviously still leading the attack on the Lonely Mountain at the end, but he does not appear in the film until after the company escapes the goblin tunnels (suggesting that the slaying of the Great Goblin is a factor in their vendetta, as it was in the novel).

• Several of the Laketown scenes have been cut, such as Bard’s imprisonment and the superfluous orc raid. However, I’ve still left quite a bit of this story-thread intact, since I felt it succeeded in getting the audience to care about the down-beaten fisherfolk and the struggles of Bard to protect them.

• The prelude with old Bilbo is gone. As with the novel, I find the film works better if the scope starts out small (in a cosy hobbit hole), and then grows organically as Bilbo ventures out into the big, scary world. It is far more elegant to first learn about Smaug from the dwarves’ haunting ballad (rather than a bombastic CGI sequence). The prelude also undermines the real-and-present stakes of the story by framing it as one big flashback.

• Several of the orc skirmishes have been cut. I felt that the Battle of the Five Armies provided more than enough orc mayhem. If you pack in too much before then, they just become monotonous, and it lessons their menace in the audience’s mind. I was tempted to leave in the very first Azog confrontation (since it resembles a chapter from the novel), but decided to cut it for a variety of reasons. Specifically, I found it tonally jarring to jump from the emotional crescendo of Thorin being saved by Bilbo (and the sense of safety the company feels after being rescued by the eagles), straight back into another chase sequence. Plus, I think the film works better if Bilbo is still trying to earn Thorin’s respect the entire journey, as he was in the novel. Not to mention the absurdity of Bilbo suddenly turning into John McClane with a sword!

• Several of the action scenes have been tightened up, such as the barrel-ride, the fight between Smaug and the dwarves (no molten gold in this version), and the Battle of the Five Armies. Though, it should be noted that Bilbo’s key scenes—the encounter with Gollum, the battle against the Mirkwood spiders, and the conversation with Smaug—have not been tampered with, since they proved to be excellent adaptions (in no small part due to Freeman’s performance), and serve to refocus the film on Bilbo’s arc.

• A lot of filler scenes have been cut as well. These are usually harder to spot (and I’ve probably missed a couple), but once they’re gone, you’ll completely forget that they ever existed. For example, the 4-minute scene where Bard buys some fish and the dwarves gather up his pay.

If we're being honest, sounds pretty good to me. Only thing in the films I liked in this list was the Bilbo/Frodo prelude, I thought it was quite heart warming and set a great tone for The Hobbit in general. But I just was not a fan of the Tauriel/Kili story line (though I didn't necessarily mind Tauriel's addition, just the stupid love triangle that fueled it) or Azog's continuance. So when I get some time I do plan on watching this, sounds like it could be interesting...

Also Brego (and others too), just out of curiosity how much "screen time" do you think a faithful adaptation of The Silmarillion would need?

Ah interesting point about the animated films, I hadn't really considered that. Personally, by the time this MIGHT even be able to happen, I think CGI could be good enough to where that really isn't an issue for me. It's already pretty damn good today, good enough to pull you in IF the movie is good enough, so I'd say in 10-20 years it'll be pretty close to realistic. Just imagine a world where celebrities no longer exist and all movies are with realistic CGI      I'm so sick of celebrity drama and how it's dumbing down society, that really might not be that bad of a thing....

I wouldn't mind a fully Animated creation 1st chapter. Perhaps until Eru actually creates the primeval new Arda and the Valar and Ainur clothe themselves as the Children of Eru. Then obviously a mixture of CG and live action.

You guys move fast, and are actually on here every day. I'll try to keep up.

Balrogs, at the top of pg 2 you said that you think there is a chance that Adam might agree to an adaptation of perhaps tCoH. Is this just a feeling you have? I'm wondering because I don't want to hope for something that will not happen within my lifetime. As an aside, I think that film literacy, or the ability of nearly anybody to make film, will begin to increase. That being said, I think that the majority of film, like the majority of writing, would still remain close to where it is while the quantity of low quality, profit oriented film (again like writing) will increase. Anyway, that's now off topic.

What I think has the greatest potential for a film (as I have mentioned) would probably be the fall of Numenor. There is so much less direct cannon then, say, Beren and Luthien that it would be harder for moviemakers to be "inaccurate" because there is such a broad target. What would have to happen, though, for a good ME movie that stayed true to the books is for a bunch of producers to essentially be willing to throw away millions of dollars on something that would probably never be commercially successful. There probably are people willing to do this, but either they are too few or CT is a lot less open minded then I think he is. Or a lot less inclined to get ready for another few hundred hours of work after devoting so much of his life to his father's legacy. Regardless, I don't expect any movies for a good long while, at least until CT dies, since I don't expect him to do the necessary work involved in such an undertaking.

Yes Cur it was an interview with Adam Tolkien that gave me that impression. I believe he's vaguely open to the idea if all the perfect ingredients fell into place. He's at absolute least open to a fantasy book adaptation, and I do believe that in 30-40 years when he's an old man (and CGI will undoubtedly be close to 100% realistic) he'll by then have agreed to free up more Tolkien copyright, if not just because the inescapable pressure of society. If not it would just be bad for the Tolkien image and would become a niche only few remembered. You'd be a literary elitist snob or a nerd at school if you read Tolkien; whereas now, even all the cool kids love Lord of the Rings.

Peter Jackson made it ok for everyone to openly love fantasy fiction and not be deemed a loser. Within half a century, I think that trend will be even greater, and he'll WANT to spread Tolkien before it falls into literary obscurity. If that means releasing a CoH or Fall of Numenor movie, so be it.