Overview
- Jackson told Deadline at Cannes that he and Warner Bros. have opened early discussions with the Tolkien Estate about rights to works such as The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
- He stressed the talks are preliminary and that no rights deal or new film adaptation has been agreed.
- The Silmarillion is a 1977 collection of J.R.R. Tolkien’s myths edited by his son Christopher, whose long-held resistance kept these stories off-limits for filmmakers.
- Warner/New Line’s Middle-earth slate is already growing, with Andy Serkis directing The Hunt for Gollum for December 2027 and Stephen Colbert developing The Shadow of the Past.
- Securing these rights would move future films into the First Age’s broader lore, a shift that would require extensive adaptation of more fragmentary, myth-like source material.