My best guess is that the recent lack of news was mainly caused by
marketing concerns. With the release of the final season of
Game of Thrones, the unrelated
Tolkien film, and of several major summer blockbusters in the last few weeks the producers probably thought it wise to postpone any further major announcements until (at least) early June. It would be strange however if we do not get any direct info in the next couple of months.
On a related note: G. R. R. Martin recently broke the news that Amazon has hired one of the more prominent writers from
Game of Thrones,
Byran Cogman, to help them “out on their big Tolkien project”.(1) TORN erroneously has called Cogman the new “leading" man for the LotR series – which still might turn out to be true, but for all that we know now he might only be a consultant. I would not read too much into this (currently) – it would be an overstatement to conclude from this that the series will have the same tone, style, etc. as GoT.
I do not want to turn this into another thread about the level of quality (or lack thereof) of the final seasons of
Game of Thrones. That said, the LOTR series will be shaped (for better and/or worse) by GoT. This is somewhat ironic, given the fact that
Game of Thrones would never have been possible if it were not for Jackson’s films. The license of the LOTR series, in return, would probably not have been acquired by Amazon without the success of
Game of Thrones. I would like to make two points, however (no spoilers here):
The less-than-stellar reception of the final season of
Game of Thrones (from many critics, casual viewers, and readers alike) could actually have positive repercussions for the LOTR series. It might allow the main writers of the LOTR series to break with certain conventions that were established by
Game of Thrones – thereby I mean conventions that are alien or even hostile to the spirit of Middle-earth (not the Middle-earth of Jackson but Tolkien himself). This is a rather far-fetched hypothesis and the writers might as well decide to go into the exact opposite direction.
On the flipside, and this is a much more sober point, it is a commonly (and not unreasonably) held belief among many readers of the books that
Game of Thrones saw a decline in quality in later seasons,
i.e., more precisely after the TV series surpassed the narrative of the books. A lot of this is brought down to certain characters and other
minutiae but on a fundamental level the series often no longer managed to organically and holistically tell its story. Once they ran out of detailed source material, the screenwriters simply had a hard time to connect the dots (the issue was not so much where the dots were located – but fill in the details between them and it gets tough). This is a
dark omen for the LOTR series in my opinion. The writers really only have the dots to work with (Númenor, The Forging of the Rings, The Last Alliance). Some of the worst moments from Jackson’s films, especially in the Hobbit, occur when the writers started to invent entire new scenes (prominent examples such as the funeral of Théodred excluded). If the writers of
Game of Thrones could not maintain the quality of a series that in so many ways matched the tropes, sentiments, and cravings of modern TV audiences, what can we expect of LOTR? Is there any hope for an artistically and intellectually stimulating work (produced by the behemoth Amazon)? Only a fool’s hope, it seems…
On a more curious note, come to think of it, it is nearly certain that some of the (at least minor) GOT veteran actors will be cast in the LOTR series. There are only so many good (read: British) actors that are fairly cheap; if the series manages to go over multiple seasons, there will be some strangely familiar faces showing up.
(1): http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/
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