Peter Jackson Is in Talks with the Tolkien Estate to Acquire the Film Rights to More of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Books
Middle-earth has barely left theaters and streaming queues since Peter Jackson’s original trilogy wrapped more than two decades ago, and the appetite for more only keeps growing. Andy Serkis is directing ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,’ set to open in theaters on December 17, 2027, while Amazon’s ‘The Rings of Power’ pushes toward its third season and the anime feature ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ already had its theatrical run back in 2024.
The catch is that nearly everything greenlit so far draws from the same limited pool of material. Every adaptation up to now has focused on the main Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books along with their appendices, and even the newly announced ‘The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past,’ which Stephen Colbert is co-writing, sticks to that same well. That film is being built from chapters three through eight of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ unfilmed material centered on the Barrow-downs sequence.
That is what makes the latest chatter so notable. A fan account called LOTR Universe recently claimed that Peter Jackson is in active talks with the Tolkien Estate to acquire rights to more of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing, with Beren and Lúthien floated as a possible next Middle earth project. The claim lines up with what Jackson has told press directly, confirming at this year’s Cannes Film Festival that he and Warner Bros are working to secure rights to move past the appendices and into meatier, previously off limits material.
The timing traces back to a shift inside the Tolkien Estate itself. Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son and longtime gatekeeper who blocked further adaptations for years, passed away in 2020, and his grandchildren now running the estate are said to be far more open to licensing talks. Jackson has noted that a change in personnel on the estate’s board may finally open the door to acquiring those rights.
Money remains the biggest obstacle. Amazon reportedly paid over 250 million dollars in 2017 just for the rights to develop ‘The Rings of Power’ from the Lord of the Rings appendices, and the Tolkien Estate has publicly stated it has no plans to adapt ‘The Silmarillion’ as a complete work. Individual First Age tales carved out on their own, including Beren and Lúthien or the Fall of Gondolin, would still likely come with an enormous price tag if the estate ever agreed to sell.
Beren and Lúthien in particular is the story insiders keep circling back to. Screenwriter Philippa Boyens, who has worked on every live action Middle-earth film since the original trilogy, told Collider that the tale of Lúthien and Beren from the Silmarillion is the one she would most want to adapt if given no restrictions. It is a tragic romance between a mortal man and an immortal elf, one that echoes through Aragorn and Arwen’s own relationship in Jackson’s original films.
Nothing about a Beren and Lúthien film is close to confirmed, and any deal still needs the estate’s sign off before cameras could roll on a First Age story. Still, with ‘The Hunt for Gollum’ already locked and Jackson clearly not finished with Middle earth, seeing that romance finally reach the screen no longer feels like a total long shot.
Which Tolkien tale would you most want to see Peter Jackson bring to the screen next?
