New Lord of the Rings Movies and IP Fatigue

How to find the most daring and original stories... (hint: it's not in film)

I do not really care about Lord of the Rings, books or movies, even though I’ve read and watched both.

But this tweet, reacting to the news, sparked some thoughts for me.

First, I agree, that it is a bit sad.

However, because entertainment in the U.S. is a capitalist enterprise, those who green-light these types of projects will always be seeking to mitigate their risk of failure, while trying to maximize their return on investment.

Often this means playing in sandboxes and with toys that have been proven to be popular, time and again, which is of course existing IP.

I have two main takeaways from this:

1. I can’t blame them for this.

The response tweet frames it like it’s a matter of personal belief, or taste, when in reality they are responding to the incentives in the marketplace based on the system that exists today.

There are a number of factors that contribute to the potential success of a project, such as the pedigree of the writers, director, actors, the genre, the budget of the project (smaller budget obviously means less is needed to break even and turn a profit), but there is a reason that IP carries so much weight.

IP often means there’s an existing audience or fanbase, or that the property has already been successful in other mediums, or even with previous films.

And when we look at the highest grossing films of all time, we see this pattern:

These are all sequels, remakes, or based on books, famous fairytales, or comic books.

The real notable exception being James Cameron (Avatar and Titanic) who is a brand unto himself.

When executives are looking to justify their choices for a failure, it’s always going to be easier if that project was based on some pre-existing property that was already successful in another context. This is why I think we also see some of the biggest box office bombs being based on IP as well:

In either case, this leads me to my second point:

2. Books/Comics are where we find the most daring and original stories being told

This is one of the reasons I think reading is so exciting! Authors are only risking their time (and maybe their sanity and self-worth), so they can create entire worlds, or attempt things that would never get approved in a studio system in a million years.

They don’t need to ask for permission, or get a budget approved to experiment: they can just write it! And then it will either work or it won’t, but it will still exist.

Books and comics are the real proving ground for stories that are ambitious, and bold, in our society. And it is no coincidence that there is such a symbiotic relationship between publishing and Hollywood, because Studios are looking for as much certainty as they can get their hands on, and a best-selling novel with a rabid fanbase is as good a place to start as any.

But authors are always going to have more creative freedom than other mediums, because even if something is successful and Hollywood is interested, there will still be so many barriers between the idea and making that project a reality. Authors can just go for it.

But that doesn’t mean that we won’t see bold and original¹ stories on the screen in the coming years. We have Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17, David Fincher’s The Killer, The Three-Body Problem coming to Netflix, Wool coming to Apple TV+, Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, or even Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part II.

It just means, that we could have read those stories first.

1. Original as in “inventive and unusual” not the “first or earliest” version of the story