[bluedevil2k]

A resume only tells you what she did in the past (or way past in her case), not what she could potentially do in the future. And not to sound ageist (I’m old as well), but she’s almost 70 and at some point she won’t be in touch with what “the kids” want any longer. Feige is 50 for comparison. I know I don’t always understand why my kids like certain things nowadays.

[runesofdoom]

You want the showrunners for Rings of Power instead? Amazon went for the best mix of young, talented and well-rexommended they could find, and they blew it.

[theshrike79]

The Tolkien estate blew it.

Amazon could only use Silmarillion, NOTHING else. They were seriously hampered on what they could touch without getting sued.

[Amezarak]

They couldn’t use the Silmarillion, only LotR, including appendices, which Tolkien had sold the film rights for long ago when he was in financial distress.

Christopher Tolkien, his son and close collaborator, hated the movies and likely was not interested in licensing anything, regardless of price. I think he was right. Since he has passed, I expect that will change sooner or later.

Even so, blaming the licensing is absurd. The writers had carte blanch to write a new, original story set in the Second Age, or flesh out the framework in the Appendices - which, by the way, is almost all Tolkien’s writing on the Second Age anyway, so they’re not missing much. They blew it because they can’t write, not because they couldn’t get all the material they needed. They deviated from all the material they did license anyway, keeping basically only character names and the barest outline of plot (magic rings are made), they changed literally almost everything else they “adapted”. Blaming the Tolkien estate is a ridiculous diversion from the utter mediocrities that are running all these major franchises.