How Amazon Should Make A Lord Of The Rings TV Show

They're taking the Hobbits to Amazon (-zon, -zon, -zon, -zon).

As has just been officially confirmed by the streaming service, a mammoth deal has been agreed to create a new TV show (and a potential spin-off to boot) set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth prior to the events of The Fellowship of the Ring.

It's unclear whether that means a more direct prequel, set in the 60 or so years between the end of The Hobbit and the start of Fellowship, or if it means the thousands of years that pre-date the story of Frodo and the War of the Ring. Either way there's a hell of a lot of material for Amazon to work with, since Tolkien's world is so incredibly vast, and they're counting on this to be their big smash (they reportedly paid somewhere between $200-250m purely for the rights, which is insane).

The show comes with a built-in audience from both the books and the movies, albeit the latter worn down through the Hobbit trilogy, but there's a lot more it must do in order to become the massive, Game of Thrones-esque success Amazon are clearly hoping for.