The Tolkien Movie Hollywood Is Afraid to Make and the Director Who Could Pull It Off

J.R.R. Tolkien is back in the news again, thanks mostly to early reports that disgraced clown Stephen Colbert will be writing a new cinematic bastardizataion of the beloved author’s legendarium.

This bit of stunt hiring has been framed as audacious by fans and detractors alike. But all the hype just stirs up controversy around a rather conventional decision. Colbert has written professionally; at least for the small screen, and he did have a small job on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. As for the political implications, the apalling Rings of Power has well acquainted Tolkien fans with Hollywood’s contempt.

The truth is that when studios contemplate returning to Middle-earth, they almost always circle the same well-trodden territory. We know they are playing it safe because there has yet been no talk of adapting the one Tolkien tale guaranteed to shock audiences.

No, I don’t mean “Leaf by Niggle.” The woefully passed-over story in question has been a key part of the legendarium since the earliest days, has been a best-selling book in its own right, and features the darkest, most intense, and most challenging themes in Tolkien’s whole corpus.

That gripping story is, of course, The Children of Hurin. And its absence from the big screen says more about Hollywood’s artistic cowardice than it does about the source material. If there was ever a Tolkien story suited for a bold and uncompromising adaptation, it is the tragic saga of Turin Turambar.

And if there is one living director equipped to bring Turin’s tragedy to the silver screen, it is Robert Eggers.

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