8 Stories Amazon's Lord Of The Rings Could Tell

One does not simply walk into the offices of the Tolkien Estate and secure a lucrative Lord of the Rings TV show deal... unless one happens to be Amazon.

The retail giant has become a major player in the video streaming sector since throwing down the gauntlet to Netflix in this arena, and the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic will no doubt be an important weapon in its bid for market domination.

Rather than retell the events of the blockbuster Peter Jackson movies, Amazon has entered a multi-season agreement to bring a series of tales set before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring to the small screen, along with possible spin-offs, and that could mean any number of things.

Tolkien's work within Middle-earth was not limited to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with short stories, poems and lore compilations laid down around these tomes, and these could serve as the outline for further adventures set in this universe.

Alternately, Amazon's showrunners could tell original tales based on the characters Tolkien created, set before Gandalf arrived in The Shire to celebrate Bilbo's birthday.

Either way, the internet retailer could have a Game of Thrones slayer on its hands.

Little is known about Amazon's plans for Lord of the Rings, but one thing set in stone is that the TV show will take place prior to the events of The Fellowship of the Ring.

One tale it could adapt is The Children Of Hurin, a story J.R.R. Tolkien penned in the late 1910s that remained uncompleted at the time of his death. It wasn't until 2007 that his son Christopher stitched these original manuscripts into a cohesive narrative and published the book to much fanfare.

Set in an age long before Hobbits, Children Of Hurin is a darkly beautiful tale about a doomed family and the curse inflicted upon them by the evil Morgoth, who was basically Sauron's First Age predecessor.

It follows the blighted lives of Turin and his sister Nienor, the offspring of Hurin, the man who dared defy the first Dark Lord and condemned his family as a result.

Adapting Children Of Hurin would bring all kinds of epic creations from Tolkien's body of work to the fore. Not only would fans get to see what this universe looked like thousands of years before the War of the Ring, the show could find its main antagonist in Morgoth, a villain most Rings fans know precious little about.

This posthumously-published story is several shades darker than Lord of the Rings, making it a prime candidate for the same hard R-rated treatment as Game of Thrones.

Could Amazon beat HBO at its own game with a Children Of Hurin adaptation? All of the key ingredients it needs to do that are there: love, loss, epic battles - it even has a dragon of sorts in the form of Morgoth's formidable servant, Glaurun.