Perhaps hoping for their very own Game of Thrones, it was revealed last Friday that Amazon Studios was in negotiations with Warner Bros. and the J.R.R. Tolkien estate to develop a Lord of the Rings TV series. Not everyone was enthused by the idea, but one person who knew that this day would be coming was Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. While speaking on Entertainment Weekly Radio, Astin was asked what he thought of the potential TV series.
I saw that the other day, and I thought that was intriguing. I’ve been saying for 15 years that maybe like 12 years after Lord of the Rings came out, that it would get remade. And people always said, ‘Oh no, it’ll never get remade! It’s a classic! They could never top it!’ And I’m like, ‘No, it’ll get remade. It’s a massive story! The characters are so beloved.’
As for whether Sean Astin would be open to reprising the role of Samwise on the series, the actor said that it hadn't even occurred to him as he's "carrying the Samwise banner for the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the Rings." Astin added that "When I saw the Amazon thing… I just sort of thought, ‘What would it be like to see the next Sam there?’ I think it’s an intriguing idea [but] the devil’s in the details. How would they do it? How? Who?" After appearing in the recently released second season of Netflix's Stranger Things, Sean Astin believes that Amazon could learn a thing or two from Netflix.
One of the great things about Netflix with Stranger Things is I’m sure they were giving script notes, but I never saw ’em. The Duffers got to make their movie. And the same was true with New Line and Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. First of all, New Zealand’s far away. And there were times they asserted themselves, but in a core way, Peter was making Peter’s movie. So I don’t know. The challenge would be, could they find some team to do it that they could let to their thing, or are they going to squat on it? It’s hard to make a TV series like this by committee.
As the proposed Lord of the Rings TV series is still in the very early stages of negotiation, it's not clear how, or if, the series would differ from Peter Jackson's trilogy, but Sean Astin hopes that more time will be spent exploring the worlds that the films didn't touch upon as much, such as the Mines of Moria, "the culture of the dwarves in the mines… I would love to see like five hours of that."