The Lord of the Rings Franchise Is Expanding to Be Like Star Wars

A handful of essential fantasy franchises have firmly established themselves at the genre’s pinnacle. Whether it be the sci-fi fantasy of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the political fantasy of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones (or A Song of Ice and Fire, rather), or classics like L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz and C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, these kinds of stories and franchises have continuously captured the imaginations of countless readers and viewers over the years. One of the most prominent and influential of all these series is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which has been adapted to the screen on numerous occasions over the years.

Although several animated versions of the material predated it, the most famous adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly the trilogy of live-action features directed by Peter Jackson in the early 2000s. These movies were groundbreaking successes, both critically and at the box office, and they are still considered some of the best films to be released this century. Though they’ve already been built upon a bit with Jackson’s three-film adaptation of The Hobbit in the early 2010s, The Lord of the Rings has been somewhat absent from the modern era of franchise domination in blockbuster entertainment. That will be changing very soon.

How The Lord of the Rings Is Already Expanding

After Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films trilogies, it seemed like the world of Middle-Earth had reached its conclusion in on-screen mainstream entertainment. However, that soon changed when Amazon picked up the rights to produce new stories based on Tolkien’s works for television.

The product of this has been The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a new streaming series that premiered its first season on Prime Video in 2022 and will unveil its sophomore outing later this year. The Rings of Power is a prequel series that explores the Second Age of Middle-Earth, when the franchise’s famous villain Sauron began amassing power, ultimately culminating in the forging of the One Ring and the grand battle on the slopes of Mount Doom that was depicted in the prologue of Jackson’s first film, The Fellowship of the Ring.

However, what separates The Rings of Power from Jackson’s film series are several behind-the-scenes legal differences and contracts. Essentially, since Amazon exclusively has the television rights to Tolkien’s writing, while Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema own the rights to Jackson’s films, the Prime Video series cannot legally connect to or build off the movies. The new streaming series must be its own thing, pulling only from Tolkien’s original text. The only thing that could change is if Amazon and WB made a deal to work together on the series, which is incredibly unlikely. Still, the series clearly has been inspired by Jackson’s approach, both in terms of storytelling and visuals, and many general audiences likely don’t realize this distinction exists.

While The Rings of Power may not expand upon the world of Jackson’s films, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any continuation of the film series. In fact, WB and New Line Cinema are actively developing new prequels and spin-off films based on the franchise Jackson established. David Zaslav even made headlines in early 2023 by stating that he envisions turning the Lord of the Rings film series into a broader franchise reminiscent of what Disney has done with Star Wars.

The first part of these efforts – though it technically was already in production before Zaslav’s takeover of WB – is an animated feature titled The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, set in the same continuity as Jackson’s films, which is set for release this December.

Allowing The Lord of the Rings Franchise to Grow

Some fans of Tolkien’s books and Jackson’s films have objected to this new expansion of the Lord of the Rings franchise, stating that it will only water down the existing movies and fail to recapture the heart of what makes the stories work, to begin with. While there is some validity to that view, as we have seen one franchise after another begin to lose its luster after being squeezed for every ounce of “content” that can be produced from it, we also don’t believe that means there should never be any more Lord of the Rings stories told on-screen.

By reviving the Lord of the Rings film series, the doorway has been opened for new voices, perspectives, and approaches to be introduced into the franchise. Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s story is a masterclass, both in how to approach adapting a story of that scale and tackling a blockbuster series while still maintaining a core creative vision. That said, Jackson’s approach is not the only one that should ever be taken to this franchise. By shutting out any further expansion of The Lord of the Rings on film, we would be missing out on other potentially outstanding adaptations of Tolkien’s work that would continue to keep the conversation around the work going.

The upcoming War of the Rohirrim animated feature is already proving to be an excellent example of this. While its story is set within the same continuity as Jackson’s films, as it is a prequel about the Rohirrim King Helm Hammerhand, set several hundred years before Frodo’s adventures, the creative approach to the story is vastly different. It is a big-budget, anime-inspired film that takes visual inspiration from Jackson’s movies as well as some of the best anime films ever produced. It shows the same creative hunger that has resulted in films like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. While it’s still to be seen whether this approach will work, it’s a creative risk that makes for an incredibly exciting development for Lord of the Rings.

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Tolkien’s Middle-Earth Lore Is Deep

There is also one key difference between how Star Wars is being expanded on-screen and how this new approach to The Lord of the Rings will likely play out. That difference is that The Lord of the Rings franchise already has a very deep existing lore developed by Tolkien and published in books such as The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, The Fall of Númenor, and many more. While Star Wars does have an extensive back catalog of “Legends” stories that can be pulled from – and already are in shows like Ahsoka – the franchise is still more frequently creating new stories, characters, and worlds than it is adapting other works.

When expanding The Lord of the Rings into a larger franchise like that, there’s no need to completely invent new stories and characters. The groundwork has already been laid out extensively by Tolkien and his son, Christopher Tolkien, who polished and published most of his father’s work posthumously. New films can be direct adaptations of some of these stories or inspired by them, at the very least. There are countless detailed stories and adventures that exist within the overall story of Middle-Earth, and the vast majority of them have never been explored on-screen. The War of the Rohirrim is already beginning to highlight this, as it adapts a story and sequence of events established in the Appendices at the end of the Return of the King novel.

Tolkien wrote countless stories that would make for excellent feature films, and this new era of the Lord of the Rings series on film could finally see many of them make their way to the big screen. Even if not all the new films are as incredible as they have the potential to be, it still provides new ways of engaging with the material and is an exciting continuation of Tolkien’s legacy. The books will continue to exist, as will Jackson’s adaptations. There will simply be new material for fans to enjoy and debate while potentially introducing Tolkien’s works to new audiences. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies are streaming on Max, while The Rings of Power is streaming on Prime Video.