A popular question to have circled the internet for years in regards to The Lord of the Rings asks where you would place the one use of the F-word allowed by the trilogy’s PG-13 rating. Some people love the idea of Isildur saying “F*ck no” when asked to cast the ring into Mount Doom by Elrond, while others have imagined Sean Bean’s Boromir telling the Hobbits that they can’t just walk into f*cking Mordor, or Gandalf reacting to Pippin’s antics in general by simply telling him to f*ck off.
Sadly, we didn’t get to hear any of Middle-earth’s most famous residents drop an F-bomb, but we might in the future after hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us Warner Bros. were looking to get the ball rolling on TV shows set in the Harry Potter universe long before it was confirmed – that New Line Cinema are reportedly interested in the idea of R-rated Lord of the Rings movies.
Of course, the much more likely scenario is that any prospective adult-orientated projects based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s expansive lore would up the ante in terms of gore and violence rather than having everyone sling profanities at each other, but it’s fun to imagine nonetheless. Recently announced animated feature The War of the Rohirrim is sure to be getting slapped with a PG-13 to earn the most money possible at the box office, unless of course it gets sent straight to HBO Max.
However, there’s almost unlimited scope in telling even more Lord of the Rings stories given the sheer depth of the mythology, and a gratuitously violent take on the bloody battles to have defined Middle-earth is something a lot of fans wouldn’t mind seeing.
