Re-Casting The Lord Of The Rings Movies If They Came Out Today

With Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show lurking on the horizon like a band of focus-tested Uruk-Hai, there's a good chance that this is the beginning of enough televisual LOTR content to last us until Tolkien himself descends from the Heavens at the apocalypse. This also means our chances of seeing another LOTR film property is minimal at best.

Yet fear not, Middle Earth mad moviegoers, for we've decided to put together a list for you to see what a LOTR film made today COULD look like.

Casting can make or break a film, and one of the many areas in which the previous films succeeded was in its actors and their brilliant, almost definitive performances. With the right current actors there's nothing to say a LOTR film wouldn't work just as well today. It's not like the source material's anything to sniff at.

Some performers are already acquainted with the big blockbuster, and others are lesser known and underrated gems. Either way, whether you know all the names on this list or not, you can count on a ring being taken, a big eye being watchful, and a middle aged man in a skin tight suit being forced to run around on all fours.

This first entry creates a paradox. If the LOTR films hadn't come out before, then chances are, Andy Serkis wouldn't be as well known as he is today. Yet it's hard to see anyone else being cast in this role under any circumstances.

Serkis is the godfather of motion capture, thanks in no small part to LOTR, and there's no one more qualified to scamper around as everyone's favourite ring obsessed, dental nightmare, Gollum.

Which makes this seem like a weird, alternate timeline entry, where Serkis would end up doing his Caesar performance first, then Gollum. What a headache this is turning out to be.

As Gollum was one of the few characters that was pretty much exactly like his counterpart in the books, there's not really any need to put a new spin on the character, and any attempt would likely suffer under direct comparison. The novelty of the character can come from watching Gollum interact with the new Sam and Frodo. Even the twenty year gap between performances shouldn't matter, thanks to the nature of the role.

With brand spanking new technology, Serkis can appear as fresh as he did back then. Ah, if only we could all run around as ageless CGI mo-cap people. It'd solve a lot of the world's problems.