The Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular fantasy series of all time. Over the years, there have been numerous adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, ranging from the live-action film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson in the early 2000s to the TV special of The Hobbit from Rankin/Bass in the late ‘70s. However, the world created by Tolkien extends far beyond the pages of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There are numerous other books that explore the lore and mythology of Middle-Earth in different ways, the most substantial of which is The Silmarillion. Though Tolkien only published The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings during his lifetime, he had been working on The Silmarillion in one way or another for nearly 60 years. The earliest drafts of The Silmarillion’s stories can be traced as far as 1914, and Tolkien developed the material until his death in 1973. The book itself wouldn’t be published until 1977, with much of the final editing and structure completed by the author’s son, Christopher Tolkien.

Next to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion is the most well-known work of Tolkien’s. Given the immense popularity of the other two stories, one would think that there would be immense interest in tackling The Silmarillion on film as well. However, there has never been a movie or series based on the book. It remains largely untouched by adaptation. This can be confusing for some new fans of Tolkien or anyone that is unfamiliar with the content of Tolkien’s most labored novel. By looking at what the book actually is, it becomes pretty clear why there has never been a movie of The Silmarillion. Here’s why The Silmarillion has never been turned into a movie or series.

It's Too Much Material

The Nine KIngs of Men, Ringwraiths, Nazgul, in The Lord of the Rings
New Line Cinema

The first thing to know about The Silmarillion is that it isn’t one story that follows one character from beginning to end. It can be broadly considered to be one story, but that story is that of Middle-Earth and the world of Arda as a whole. The Silmarillion is essentially the Middle-Earth equivalent of The Bible. It tells the creation story of the world, as well as many of the most crucial events that shaped what we know as Middle-Earth. If you’ve read either The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, you know that both of those books are packed with references to old legends and heroic tales of years past. While some of those stories were expanded upon in the Appendices included at the end of The Return of the King, it is in The Silmarillion that those stories were really fleshed out and fully developed.

The Silmarillion consists of five distinct parts, with each tackling a different aspect of the mythology of Middle-Earth. In order, these parts are: Ainulindalë, the creation story of Tolkien’s world; Valaquenta, an exploration of the Valar and the Maiar, who are essentially the gods of Middle-Earth; Quenta Silmarillion, the largest section of the book which details the numerous adventures and happenings of the First Age of Middle-Earth; Akallabêth, the story of Númenor in the Second Age; and, lastly, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, which fleshes out the events that eventually lead into the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Each of these five parts of The Silmarillion explains a new part of the overall lore of The Lord of the Rings. There are new quests and heroes in each, though very little of it is told through their perspectives. In general, The Silmarillion is written more as a historical text that relays these stories, rather than as a narrative story like the two books that preceded it.

It is because of this approach that The Silmarillion is widely considered to be one of the densest and hard-to-grasp books of Tolkien’s Legendarium. What makes this somewhat ironic is that the page count of the book isn’t nearly as long as this overall description might make you believe, as it only somewhat exceeds even that of The Hobbit. However, the information relayed by The Silmarillion is tightly compacted into those pages. Because The Silmarillion tells so many stories and explores countless major events and characters of Middle-Earth’s history, it would be nearly impossible to adapt it, especially into a feature film. The Silmarillion, on the whole, is an establishment of the deep lore of Middle-Earth, and while the individual stories outlined within it would make for excellent films or series, the book as a whole is far too expansive to tackle in a single film. Even a trilogy of films wouldn’t be able to coherently capture all the details of the book. Before Jackson’s trilogy in the early 2000s, The Lord of the Rings was considered to be an unfilmable story, but The Silmarillion is the work of Tolkien’s that is most deserving of that reputation.

Related: Lord of the Rings: How War of the Rohirrim Could Establish a New Path for the Series

It'd Be Too Expensive

The Kingdom of Valinor in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Amazon Prime Video

Another key reason why there really hasn’t been any attempt to adapt The Silmarillion is because doing so would be such a monumental task that it would require an absurdly immense budget to even remotely do the book justice. Generally speaking, the further into the past you go in the timeline of Middle-Earth, the more fantastical and grander it becomes. This can be seen a bit with Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, which is adapting the story of the Second Age of Middle-Earth, which is thousands of years prior to The Lord of Rings. That series has already shown a tendency to embrace a lot more high-fantasy elements than even the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. That is because those later stories are almost post-apocalyptic in nature, with much of the world revolving around various ancient societies and civilizations that collapsed ages prior. That’s why so much of the world in The Lord of the Rings consists of crumbling towers and abandoned fortresses. In the Second Age, many of those civilizations still existed and were at the height of their power; with that, there’s naturally a lot more work that needs to be done to establish their majesty on-screen.

The same is true of the events of the First Age and the time before that, as detailed in The Silmarillion. The stories of this time are even more epic and sweeping than The Lord of the Rings. There are significantly more high-fantasy beings and creatures that are much more involved in the story. The Valar, which play essentially no part in The Lord of the Rings, are key characters throughout much of The Silmarillion. Even further, dragons play a much larger role in the First Age, in addition to other creatures like werewolves and the titan-sized, spider-like creature Ungoliant. There are also much larger and grander fortresses and cities, such as Gondolin and Angband. All of these high fantasy elements are crucial to the stories of The Silmarillion, so they could not be omitted from a potential adaptation. The issue is that they would be astronomically expensive to actually bring to life on-screen.

That’s not even to mention the various major battles and wars of the First Age. The First Age eventually comes to a climactic end with the War of Wrath, which was essentially a 40-year-long battle between all the forces of good and evil. Tolkien pulled out all the stops for the War of Wrath, which heavily involves essentially every kind of creature or being in existence in the First Age, including Ancalagon the Black, the largest winged dragon to exist in the entire history of Arda. To do the War of Wrath justice on-screen would be a colossal task, and the very brief flashback to it in the debut episode of The Rings of Power is likely the most that fans will ever see of it on-screen. The events detailed in The Silmarillion are immensely imaginative and ambitious, and to bring them to life on film or television would likely be a financial gamble that no major studio is likely to ever take on. Even Amazon, with the absurd amount they spent on The Rings of Power, elected to stick to the stories of the Second Age.

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How It Has Been and Could Be Approached

The War of Wrath against Morgoth in The Rings of Power
Amazon Studios

With all of that said, that does not mean that nothing from The Silmarillion will ever be adapted in any form. While no on-screen adaptation of material from The Silmarillion has happened at this point, material from the book has made its way into music. One of the most notable musical adaptations of The Silmarillion is the album Nightfall in Middle-Earth, by the German power metal band Blind Guardian. The record, which is over an hour in length, tackles many of the stories of The Silmarillion, with tracks ranging from “War of Wrath” to “The Curse of Feanor,” “Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)” and “The Eldar.” Beyond that, there have also been a few classical interpretations of the material from composer Martin Romberg.

If The Silmarillion were ever to be brought to screen, it would likely not be in its full form. It would make the most sense to tackle individual stories found within it, rather than the book in its entirety. There are numerous tales from The Silmarillion that would make for great films or series. In particular, many of them could be well-suited for the medium of animation. Some of the most famous and well-regarded tales from The Silmarillion are those of Túrin Turambar, the man Beren and the elf Lúthien Tinúviel, the legendary Fëanor and the oath he made as well as the destruction of the city of Gondolin. Three of those stories have even been compiled, re-edited and republished in their own books: The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin.

The biggest reason for none of the events of The Silmarillion ever making it to screen, however, is the wariness from the Tolkien Estate to approve such an adaptation. Tolkien himself was notoriously opposed to any adaptations of his material. Given the time in which he lived, it’s not hard to understand why, as the technology needed to bring Middle-Earth to life faithfully did not exist yet. While the Tolkien Estate has obviously allowed various adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, there has yet to be anything to come from The Silmarillion. Even Amazon, with The Rings of Power, only has the rights to the events of the Second Age as they are described in the Appendices of The Return of the King. They can’t touch any details exclusive to The Silmarillion. However, this may all be about to change, as the rights to all of Tolkien’s material, including The Silmarillion, have recently been sold to the entertainment company Embracer. While it’s still to be seen what route Embracer will choose to take with the series (more video games seem the most likely), they could theoretically enter a deal with a major studio to produce stories from The Silmarillion and other Tolkien books.