With the over the top success of Game of Thrones on HBO, it stands to reason that content creators and streaming services are looking for the next habit forming sword and sorcery series. So, why not go to the definitive property of the genre, which is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Sure, Peter Jackson's mined the trilogy as well as the Hobbit prequels but there's much more to Middle Earth and Amazon Prime Video has the rights.
Amazon announced today that it has acquired the global TV rights to The Lord of the Rings. Amazon Studios will produce a multiseason television series in cooperation with New Line Cinema, the Tolkien estate and HarperCollins. The multi-season series will not retell the main epic story (we already have 10 hours of film dedicated to that), but will pursue connected storylines set in the same world.
Source: Engadget