Middle-earth News: Christopher Tolkien Resigned from Tolkien Estate, and More

Christopher Tolkien submitted his resignation as a director for the Tolkien Estate (established 2012) effective August 29. The news only came to light for the vast majority of us in the past 1-2 days. Tolkien Brasil was the first Website to publish the story, although the Middle-earth Blog at Xenite.Org is being credited by many sites with being the first. Well, we were the first English language blog to carry the news. I think the Tolkien Brasil folks may have learned about the news from a Reddit discussion, but I didn't think to check with them.

Of course, while that is stunning news it comes on the heels of the announcement from Jeff Bezos that Amazon secured the rights to produce at least one and possibly two television shows based on The Lord of the Rings.  By all accounts (mostly based on analysis of the press release), the first show will cover events prior to "The Fellowship of the Ring".  And while many fans are hoping for an adaptation of The Silmarilion I and others don't believe that is in the deal.  It looks like, for now, rights to The Silmarillion are still off the table.  But maybe the Tolkien Estate will shop those rights around.  Other works that could be shopped out include Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The History of Middle-earth (all twelve volumes).

The potential for an unimaginable amount of movies and television shows is there.  You could schedule an entire Middle-earth channel with round-the-clock programming based on The Lord of the Rings alone because of all the historical anecdotes and characters mentioned in the primary narrative as well as the appendices.  I don't know how extensive the deal is for Amazon but if the Tolkien Estate really sold off everything to Bezos, they could have created an entertainment monster the likes of which we have not seen.  People could end up saying "George R.R. Who?"

But enough of that.  We have an ongoing discussion about the Amazon TV show and Christopher Tolkien at SF-Fandom.  Everyone is welcome to participate.  Of course, free registration is required in order to post in the forums.

On a side note, I want to mention that we're slowly upgrading Xenite.Org and SF-Fandom this year.  Xenite has been converted to HTTPS and we're trying to decide what to do with the front page.  Also, our Harry Potter section is being migrated to a new subdomain and we'll be setting up a new Andre Norton subdomain.  But that's all work that is done when we have spare time, of which we have little.

SF-Fandom's front page has also been replaced with feeds from the forums and blogs.  We haven't decided what to do about the primary blog, which hasn't been updated in a while.  Dixie used to be really helpful in these areas.  We miss her terribly, not just because she was the technical wiz behind the curtains.

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