Elijah Wood Hopes There Will Be Genuine Passion Behind New Lord Of The Rings Movies
Blockbuster franchises have been around for decades, but it feels as if Hollywood has never been quite as enthusiastic about its popular properties. From "Star Wars" to "Harry Potter" to "The Lord of the Rings," Hollywood seems obsessed with bringing back older, successful IPs, continuing their stories, and building on their universes for as long as they remain profitable. Depending on who you ask, that's either a cynical interpretation of the current state of cinema or a geek's childhood dream come true. If that person is Elijah Wood, it's a little bit of both, and there's enough room for authentic creativity so long as artists are those same types of geeks.
Wood is referring to Warner Bros. Discovery's plans to produce more "Lord of the Rings" movies, a move that reflects a larger push from major studios to promote their brand with big-name, recognizable IPs. Similarly, Warner Bros. has also announced that a "Harry Potter" television series will make its way to HBOMax, which at that point will be renamed "Max." The move follows the release of the Amazon Prime series "The Rings of Power," confusingly a separate production that's considered canonically unrelated to both Warner Bros.' film slate and news of an upcoming anime film from Warner Bros. called "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim."
The business of nerdom
Speaking to GQ, Wood observed that it's the nature of Hollywood studio heads to continue to try to make money off of previous successes. "It's not that a bunch of executives are like, 'Let's make really awesome art,'" he expressed. Still, Wood avoided taking a critical standpoint and astutely stated that cinema has always been about the intermingling of creativity and business. He said he's "not begrudging anybody because, of course, it is commerce. But great art can come from commerce. So those two things are not mutually exclusive." The key, he argued, is in hiring creatives who have a love of the material, just like Peter Jackson was a dedicated devotee of J.R.R. Tolkien:
"But 'Lord of the Rings' didn't come out of that place. It came out of a passion for these books and wanting to see them realized. And I hope that that is ultimately what will drive everything forward with whatever these subsequent movies are. I just hope that it's the same motivating factor at its core, whenever they hire a screenwriter and a filmmaker — that it is with reverence for Tolkien's material and enthusiasm to explore it."
It's a sentiment that rings true (no pun intended) for Hollywood's other ventures in planning blockbuster universes. Storytelling quality should take precedence over character cameos or inside baseball-like references. The best way to ensure that, of course, is to hire people who are as excited about the source material as studio executives are hoping fans are to see the actual stories.