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movie - Why do people say that Peter Jackson can not make LOTR/Hobbit sequels?


I was reading a couple of posts on forums where people said that "The Silmarillion" would make a great basis for an action movie, a sequel (or would that be prequel?) to LOTR and Hobbit.


But someone went all negative on that idea and said that Peter Jackson can't ever do Silmarillion movie, even if he wanted to, and alluded to the fact that this was a fact and not an opinion.


Is there some proof to that statement and if so, why is that the case?



Answer



Short version:




  • The rights to "The Silmarillion" belong to Tolkien estate





  • Peter Jackson's movie adaptations were NOT positively recieved by the estate, especially Christopher Tolkien. He expressed that directly to Jackson, and Jackson stated so in an interview. From the article linked below:



    Christopher Tolkien, the son of J.R.R. Tolkien and the editor his father’s posthumously published work The Silmarillion, did an interview with Le Monde and had nothing nice to say about Peter Jackson’s adaptations of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Asked about meeting with the director, Tolkien told the interviewer:



    "They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. And it seems that The Hobbit will be of the same ilk. Tolkien became...devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work."



    As you might imagine, that quote got back to the filmmaker. Later that month, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was part of the Warner Bros. panel at San Diego Comic-Con and Jackson and many members of the cast were in attendance. During the question and answer portion of the presentation, Jackson was asked by a fan if there was any chance he would direct an adaptation of The Silmarillion after the end of the Hobbit movies, and the director quickly shut the idea down. He explained:




    "I don’t think the Tolkien estate liked those films. I don’t think The Silmarillion will go anywhere for quite a long time."






  • Thus, there's low chance that in the near future, Jackson will obtain the rights.




A good article on the topic is here. Among other things, it honestly states that - as much as "creative differences of opinion" between Tolkien Jr. and Jackson - it's at least partially about money:




In an interview with Le Monde back in 2012, Tolkien Estate lawyer Cathleen Blackburn recounted, "These hugely popular films apparently did not make any profit! We were receiving statements saying that the producers did not owe the Tolkien Estate a dime."



Given what happened with Mary Poppins Disney adaptaton (she didn't want to sell, and eventually gave in as she needed money), one can predict that the chances of eventual Silmarillion adaptation are correlated to the amount of greed on the part of Estate owners and the amount of money they expect to make on any licensing/rights deal. But short term, that may be tempered by Christopher Tolkien's opinion.


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