- Joined
- Jan 17, 2018
The working theory is that they were developing a Dragon Age adaptation, then bought the rights to the slightest fraction of Lord of the Rings. Since they already had a bunch of stuff written for elves, dwarves and humans, they just dumped it all in their billion-dollar purchase rather than, well, try. Skimped everywhere else because they'd spent so much on rights.It would seem weird for Amazon to do that given how much money they spent on the IP, but I definitely think this is a more common practice than one would expect. That Halo show bore such little resemblance to the original IP that I have to suspect it was some generic spaceshit script that had a search-replace done on key terms.
Considering how they treat IPs in Hollywood, it's undoubtedly true that they do this search-replace-style adaptations. The third Die Hard was definitely a non-Die Hard script before they adapted it - but that's likely the exception that proves the rule, because it's still a good movie. All these other identity swaps seem to come about because no one involved gives a shit about the franchise they're adapting, and that's especially true when it comes to computer game stuff, if everything from Halo and the Resident Evil show to whatever happened with The Witcher to get Henry Cavill to drop his dream role is any indication.