The Lord of the Rings will be taken off Netflix on March 31, 2023. HBO Max will still have The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The movies that started it all have led to franchises like “The Last of Us” and sparked a new “rights war” between Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon over Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy returned to Netflix on February 1, but it will be there for a while. The licensing deal ended right after Warner Bros. Discovery said it was making more Lord of the Rings movies.
Variety wrote about the news in February, explaining that the new leaders of WBD, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, worked with Freemode to make a deal so that the new movies could be made. When Amazon bought MGM, the studio with the TV rights to Lord of the Rings, De Luca, and Abdy left and went to work for WBD. The new war for Lord of the Rings may be why Netflix took the trilogy down.
Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon are in a strange race to make the best Lord of the Rings show. Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is about the rise of Sauron, but it needs to be clarified what WBD’s new movies will be about. Some people think that the studio wants to remake the first three movies.
Even though The Lord of the Rings came out 20 years ago, the fact that Netflix is getting rid of the three movies is still news. That’s because the trilogy still has many fans, and remaking it would be like making the original Star Wars trilogy all over again: you don’t do it. The studio may be up to something else if they choose to go in a different direction with the Lord of the Rings universe.
The director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Peter Jackson, said that Warner Bros. Discovery has been in touch with him and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, two of his most important collaborators. Jackson isn’t officially signed on to direct another Lord of the Rings movie, but the director will somehow be involved with the new film.
Even though Lord of the Rings isn’t in Netflix’s library, it still has a lot of popular shows and movies. However, users are still sad about the loss. The trilogy is still one of the best made, but the Hobbit trilogy that came after it fell short. This trilogy moved away from what made the first one so good. Instead of practical effects and natural places, it relied heavily on computer-generated imagery (CGI).
The deal for new Lord of the Rings movies was made possible with the help of Freemode CEO Lee Guinchard. He said, “We know how important these works are, and together with our partners at New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures, we plan to honor the past, look to the future, and stick to the highest level of quality and production values.”