The Book Report: A Lord of the Rings TV Show is Coming to Amazon
Looking for some Thanksgiving dinner conversation that will (hopefully) distract your family members from either a) fighting about politics or b) asking you why you’re still single? Look no further. Here at the Book Report, we pluck book-related stories from the otherwise hellish news cycle and we chat about them.
11/13/17: Amazon is Making a Lord of the Rings TV Adaptation
The end of Game of Thrones is nigh, which means someone’s going to have to step up to the plate and make a new show about dragons, and soon, or we’ll all be lost. Amazon, having recently confirmed that they’re making a multi-series TV adaptation of Lord of the Rings, is more than up to the challenge. They’ll be working with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, which is big.
Now, before anyone gets either excited or furious, bear in mind: all we know so far is that Amazon has acquired the rights. As of now, it doesn’t sound like they’re interested in remaking the films.
The television adaptation will tell new stories based in the period preceding The Fellowship of the Ring, the novel that provided the basis for the first part of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.
Which means it could be a TV show version of The Silmarillion, or it could be more along the lines of what Tolkien featured in the appendices (Aragorn meeting Arwen, the history of Gondor, etc.). We’ll just have to wait and see. And speaking of TV adaptations…
11/16/17: There’s Going to Be a Catch-22 Miniseries Starring George Clooney
This is interesting for a couple of reasons:
- They have been trying to make Catch-22 happen on-screen since the 1970s, with little success. We’ve been treated to a movie and a pilot for a TV show, but the former wasn’t well-received by critics and the latter never really got off the ground.
- George Clooney hasn’t done much by way of TV acting since ER; he left the show back in the 90s. Since then, he has mostly been focused on doing movies and being married to a renowned human rights lawyer.
11/6/17: Turns Out, Charles Bukowski’s Poems Were “Mangled” By Editors
The Charles Bukowski we all knew and loved (or hated) liked to write about three things: sex, alcoholism, and the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. But the poems that came out after his death (so post-1994) seem very un-Charles Bukowski-like. And apparently, there’s a good reason for that—they were heavily edited. A scholar named Abel Debritto recently uncovered Bukowski’s original poems and manuscripts and was appalled by how much Bukowski’s works were “mangled” in the editing process.
Possibly my favorite part of the entire story is that one of Bukowski’s poems, originally titled “stone tiger, frozen sea,” was changed to “like a dolphin.” Debritto had this to say:
“Bukowski was not a dolphin kind of guy,” said Debritto.
BUKOWSKI WAS NOT A DOLPHIN KIND OF GUY. I hope that when I die, my stance on dolphins is crystal clear. If you don’t already know what it is, then you do not know me at all.
