Filming The Silmarillion?
 

I wonder if you could do it in only 12 hours. It would be a hell of an epic. Christian Spotlight on the Movies would have a cow regarding the beginning, though.

I'd like to see them take an approach similar to the Animatrix, except it should not be limited to animated sequences. Release a multi-disc box set with different stories done by different directors/artists. Peter Jackson could direct "The War of the Ring" of course. And even though it's an appendix as opposed to part of the Silmarillion, I think they should film the story of Arwen and Aragorn with Liv and Vigo.

If anything, the Simarillion has a grander, more expansive, more convoluted set of characters, plot and history. Judging by the heroic effort need to film LOTR (which is like "See Spot Run" by comparison) filming the Simarillion would be impossible.

Both of these stories (in abbreviated form) have already been filmed. The first for FOTR, the latter for TTT.

The Sil could never be covered in any real detail in a 12 hour film. Too many characters, plot points and climaxes. (I'd recommend a MINIMUM of a full 23 episode series of 1hr productions (47 min. x 23 episodes equals 18 hours of content). And that might not be enough....

As above suggests, I agree that a serial production would be the appropriate approach. But even then, the cost would likely outweigh the return.

Finally, the Sil is sooo dark (in parts) and complex, it would likely have to be extensively changed to be produced for general consumption.

In otherwords, it will never happen.

Now, The Hobbit... that's got real life and possibilities...

Well, they did I Claudius, which is in the same vein. The Silmarillion would work as a miniseries, where each episode was a separate story (considering that most of the later chapters follow a particular character, this is probably how the miniseries should go), but it would be necessary to see each episode for all the recurring characters and how they interact. This would never work as something for theatrical release, because the movie would have to be 70 hours long to incorporate some of the stuff in the book. The book is around 300 pages, not including the appendix or the sundering of the Elves, and some of those pages have sentences like "And the whole host of Morgoth was emptied from Angband," which essentially says an entire country of orcs, Balrogs, and dragons head out to war. Now, it's easy to write that, but to film it, well...whoo.



But things like The Lay of Luthien would be perfect for a feature length time span, but only in a miniseries format, because so much of the story depends on knowing all the history of Middle Earth up to that point.

So, Pete, go talk to HBO, they'll set you up.