Let’s Talk About | The Lord of the Rings TV Show

Last updated on 8 January 2025

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This week it was announced that the Lord of the Rings TV show would run for 5 seasons.

I think I may have known about the Lord of the Rings TV show being on the cards recently (it sounded super familiar) but it wasn’t until this week that I really properly found out. According to the internet, Amazon Studios has picked up the rights to turn J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings into a TV series, with a 5-season deal already set up. That’s a lot of LOTR heading our way.

So, what’s happening?

After a little researching, it seems like the Lord of the Rings TV show won’t be a remake of the New Zealand made trilogy (hallelujah, high-fives all round, and don’t even get me started on how stupid an idea that would have been and don’t you even dare mess with Peter Jackson thank you and goodbye), but rather a story line based on Tolkien’s notes and appendices he wrote around the LOTR series. Apparently Amazon has confirmed the possibility of a spin-off series in the future.

Amazon will be working with Tolkien Estate and Trust, HarperCollins, and New Line Cinema (the studio who did LOTR series), and there are various rumours and thoughts and ideas floating around as to what the storyline might be about, or what aspects of Tolkien’s notes and appendices that might grab and run with for the 5-season show. Whatever they decide to do, it’s not like they’re lacking in material. Tolkien’s world reaches far, far beyond the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit novels, and there’s a lot to play with. Thanks to Google, I found this article on the Independent which says that some people think it’ll be based on a young Aragorn, but who’s to say and I don’t know if that’s confirmed or not.

Production won’t start for a while yet, and a few sites I’ve seen have suggested nothing until at least the fall of 2019 (which is like, October, November), so we still have a long while to go. But if they get a move on, we may start to see sneak peaks of what’s come, in terms of characters, actors, plot lines and filming locations.

Will the Lord of the Rings TV show be a hit?

You know what, I think it might be!

It’s not going to be a remake of the trilogy, so even the hard-core fans of LOTR (and the Hobbit? Are there hard-core fans of the Hobbit films? I feel they were nowhere near as good…a chat for another day) can’t really get up and arms about it because they’re not destroying something that is already so wonderful and so well loved. It’s something new, in a land and a time that they’ve already fallen in love in with.

Lovers of the written story might have something to say if they manage to muck up details, but a movie or a TV show is never fully a good representation of the book version – Harry Potter attests to that – and it’s never going to be 100% right.

I think the beauty of what Amazon will be doing is that they’re taking a world that is already established and they’re adding to it. They’re not going to be subtracting away from the films that we already love (and boy do we love them!), but they’re looking around it and seeing what else could be done, what could be added, what other stories could be told.

There will definitely be people who won’t go for it, and if the stories they choose or write aren’t great then maybe it will flop. I don’t know. What I do know is that I, for one, am excited to journey back to Middle Earth once again.

What do you think about the upcoming The Lord of the Rings TV show? 

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*UPDATE July 2019: More was announced on the TV show.

**UPDATE December 2024: Well, we’ve had two seasons of what was called The Rings of Power … and I have a lot of thoughts. ALl of which I can’t put here in a post about the announcement. I wondered when writing this blog post back in 2018 if the show was ‘going to be a hit’, and I thought it might be. You’ll have your own thoughts on Rings of Power, but I don’t love it. Which I hate writing out, but I don’t. Visually I think it’s stunning. Especially the first season. But the plot, the dialogue, the supposed twists that were called in literally episode one or two … it hasn’t been written well at all in my opinion. Will I keep watching it? Yeah probably … for the visuals. So my friend and I have something to rant about. But is it good? … Not in my opinion. Alas.