Tolkien's heirs will not let them touch The Silmarillion. The current show is based on the appendices to LOTR. I watched it for a while and enjoyed it, I'm not caught up. Certainly better than the Hobbit bullshit. Hopefully this opens the door to doing stuff from Sil.
Fuckn YAWN Everything has to be a franchise now doesn't it? They already butchered The Hobbit by turning a short story into 9 hours of crap by padding out and blatantly making shit up. It's not like all these "safe bets" the studios are making are paying out too well at the moment, so why not try taking some smaller risks with new and different projects? I'm sure Hollywood is flooded with people with original ideas and scripts that are being bypassed because Fast And Fuckaround 11tyone needs to be made because money.