Why making more ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies is a terrible idea

When Bilbo Baggins wrote about his unexpected journey to the Misty Mountains, he titled it “There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale.”

Little did we, the audience, know that we too would come back to “The Lord of the Rings” again, and again, and again, and again.

And now — ugh — again!

During a quarterly earnings call with investors this week, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that yet more Tolkien movies are on the way from their New Line Cinema.

“For all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien remains largely unexplored on film,” said Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy.

The extended versions of the six “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films add up to about 20 hours total, which seems pretty well explored to me.

On paper, the move is logical. The company is struggling, and director Peter Jackson’s sextet of movies did big business for WB, grossing a combined $6 billion at the worldwide box office. And half of them reaped acclaim. All three entries in the “LOTR” trilogy were nominated for Best Picture, and “Return of the King” finally won the big prize in 2004. WB sure ain’t winning an Oscar for “Black Adam.”

However, let’s be honest, has there been a quality Middle Earth anything in the past 20 years? No. Not one. Gandalf yelled, “You shall not pass!” at the Balrog. These days it’s more like, “You shall not pass muster!”

In his review of 2013’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” Post critic Lou Lumenick said that Jackson was “mercilessly padding out J.R.R. Tolkien’s 300-page prequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as a trilogy to fill corporate coffers.” All three “Hobbit” entries were ungodly long and totally witless.

Before that, in 2006, there was the $24 million stage musical “Lord of the Rings” — then the most expensive show ever — that began its short life in Toronto. It got terrible reviews and lost every one of its Canadian loonies and toonies. Not trusting those naysayers to the north, the show’s producers transferred it to London’s West End anyway. The musical closed after just one year with an empty wallet. Post columnist Michael Riedel proclaimed it “The Lord of the Flops.”

And, in another most-expensive-something-ever maneuver, Amazon dropped its $715 million “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” TV series on Prime last year. (Some outlets reported that it cost as much as $1 billion.) Reviews ranged from respectable to wretched, and audiences didn’t respond well either. Some blame the bashing on a racist online backlash against the diverse casting, but do you know a single person who has watched “Rings of Power”? 

WB surely dreams that “Lord of the Rings” can become a “Star Wars” or a Marvel-style universe, in which Elrond is the focus of a sophisticated political thriller and they churn out a buddy comedy about Merry and Pippin. (Amazon has the TV rights.)

But the Tolkien-verse more closely resembles another WB debacle: “Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.” Based on J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” supplemental writings, and padded out into mushy adventure movies, the first three of those have been a major money drain and critical target for the studio. Fans, it turns out, don’t really care about the so-called Wizarding World unless Harry is in it. 

Tolkien’s “Appendices” and “The Silmarillion” are much the same. They are intriguing, if dense, add-ons for loyal readers, but not meaty or involving enough for a saga that rivals or so much as stands next to “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s like trying to turn the Encyclopedia Britannica into a Hulu miniseries. Boring. Pointless.

What studios should be doing is looking for the next “Avatar,” an original story that captures the world’s imagination (and billions), instead of giving a tired old elf a makeover.