The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is one of the series that is raising the most expectations in recent times; and controversy. And it is that Amazon Studios has opted for a multimillion-dollar production to adapt Tolkien’s work in episodic format, although without counting what Peter Jackson already dealt with at the time with his two trilogies cinematographic. So what material can Amazon adapt for its series? Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have detailed to Vanity Fair the books they can and cannot work with.
The rings of power without the complete works of Tolkien
So, J.D. Payne speaks clearly and acknowledges that “we only have the rights to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the >appendices and The Hobbit. That’s it. We do not own the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth or The Story of Middle-earth”, says one of the heads of the Amazon series.
All posters of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Even so, Patrick McKay clarifies that they have all the material they need from the Second Age in the books to which they do have the rights: “As long as we stay within those lines and don’t contradict offensively something that we don’t have the rights to, we have a lot of room and space to tell some of the best stories that Tolkien came up with,” says the other person in charge of The Rings of Power.
And to fill in any gaps between different stories, Payne adds that “we collaborate with renowned Tolkien experts and the Tolkien Estate to ensure that the way the that we connected the gaps was Tolkienian, we consolidated it with the experts and the knowledge of the material on the part of the Tolkien Estate.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere its first season on September 2, 2022 on Amazon Prime Video.
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