Spinoff: Is The Silmarillion possible to adapt to screen

I’d love to see it done as a GoT type series.

No

No. And it wasn’t written to be read by the public, either. Tolkien wrote it for himself, to keep his cosmology straight. He never intended to release it, for good reason. It’s not really a novel with dialogue, a story arc and characters that develop; it’s just a dry accounting of the history of a fictional universe. Maybe a movie could be made set in one of the events described in the Silmarillion, fleshed out with characters, dialogue, and a self-contained story arc, but a film of the Silmarillion itself would be like filming Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall... it’s a long history; you’d need to pick an event and write a separate self contained story set at that time with actual human interest.

Nope...

As TV anthology series (movies or shows), sure. But, while I'm a huge Tolkien fan and would love to see this adapted, it would have to be done by someone extremely good because it's covering so many different stories, so many milieus, and so much history that it would be almost impossible to develop a new fan following (as opposed to hardcore fans of Tolkien's writings) because it's just too broad and epic. Or to put it more on the nose, too complicated and confusing. The average audience member would have difficulty relating because most anthology series are designed so episodes work as stand-alone united by a common theme (Twilight Zone is the classic example) but Tolkien's stories don't really work as stand-alones because they partake of a common mythology and their significance springs from that. It's difficult to talk about one character without giving context involving centuries.

Just to be clear, this isn't a major fan saying general audiences aren't equipped to handle it. It's a major fan saying it's difficult to give general audiences a good reason to make the effort over the course of several stories. If you can't do that, the audiences are completely justified in tuning you out. I do think a very good writer could adapt a few of the stories. "Guardians of the Galaxy" would be my go-to justification -- little-known aspect of the Marvel Universe to the general audiences but they were willing to embrace it because it was well-done.

Edit: corrected "are" to "aren't"

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it wasn’t written to be read by the public, either. Tolkien wrote it for himself, to keep his cosmology straight. He never intended to release it

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I had no idea about this, but it makes total sense now. I don't care that it lacks a narrative style... Those stories, to me, are just far more fascinating than a lot of the stuff in LOTR, due to their epicness in the true sense of the word.

If you did make a Silmaril anthology story, focusing on Beren and Luthien, you could always have a big long intro at beginning of ep 1 that sets the whole scene for the world they lived and how special the gems were, to give the audience a good background of whats going on.

Maybe build a movie around Melkor and Ungoliant vs the Valar.

Would be tough. I don’t even think their appearances are described in any detail.

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I don't care that it lacks a narrative style

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It’d be like filming The Encyclopedia.

You and I may love overdosing on anything Tolkien, but there’s just not enough people out there like that to justify what would be a gigantic expense.

I guarantee any and all movie or TV executives will say “great, pick out one especially compelling sub-story and flesh it out into a screenplay with an actual narrative, fully developed characters, and dialogue”.

Otherwise it’s just a cosmology. It’d be like saying “let’s make Norse Mythology, The Movie”. No. You have to pick one mythological figure and make a story about one especially compelling adventure he’s involved in.

Take for example The Odyssey. It doesn’t try to be All of Greek Mythology, it’s just the saga of one main guy and his companions on a trip. That’s why it’s compelling.

The Silmarillion is the only Tolkien book that I haven't read a dozen times. If I read books anymore I could see myself rereading it now. I would go see any movie or TV show based on anything Tolkien.

I believe Amazon acquired the rights to some LOTR universe source material about a year ago. Could be Silmarillion

Read The Silmarillion recently, really enjoyed it