Lord Of The Rings TV Show: Sense8 Creator Wants To Work On It

Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV show is one of the most buzzed-about upcoming shows on streaming or network TV, in part for the $1 billion that the company is reportedly spending to produce it. It's going to be a prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but that's almost all we know about it. While we wait for more details, a prominent Hollywood writer has come forward to say he'd like to work on it.

J. Michael Straczynski--who created or co-created the shows Babylon 5, Crusade, Jeremiah, and Sense8--says he would "give a lung" to be its showrunner. It's 2018, so this all happened on Twitter, where Straczynski accidentally tagged Netflix in his post instead of the show's actual network, Amazon. Whatever the case, he's clearly passionate about The Lord of the Rings, saying he reads the books every two years and has seen all the Lord of the Rings movies "dozens of times." Not only that, but he also wrote a term paper in college completely in Elvish. Yeah, I'd say he knows his stuff.

Straczynski also thinks Sean Astin, who played Sam in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, would think Straczynski would make a good showrunner. Astin chimed in as well to say Straczynski's take on The Lord of the Rings "would have passion and integrity."

Here are the relevant tweets:

Straczynski's tweets were in response to him being named on The Lord of the Rings fansite The One Ring's list of people they would like to see serve as the showrunner. Amazon has yet to make any announcements about the talent in front of or behind the camera for the show. Given that the show needs to be in production in the next two years, we expect more details to come relatively soon.

Straczynski also wrote the Clint Eastwood-directed movie Changeling, which was nominated for three Academy Awards.

While no new Lord of the Rings films have been announced, a movie about Tolkien's relationship with with his wife Edith Bratt and his time in World War I is in the pipeline. Another film will explore the author's relationship with Narnia writer C.S. Lewis and how he helped convert Lewis to Christianity. In other news, Universal might be working on a Lord of the Rings amusement park in Florida.