While for several decades the fantasy was marginal in Hollywood, it is on the contrary the king genre these days. After learning that Warner Bros. produced a new film Game of Thronesthis new feature film with Dave Bautista risks angering the Hollywood major.
The Lord of the Rings: a serious competitor for Warner
The character of Gollum is known to everyone. Antagonist of the books The Hobbit et Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, it is directly inspired by Grendel, the monster from the medieval Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, written between the end of the 7th century and the first millennium. A great admirer of this poem, the philologist Tolkien translated it into English during his youth. The father of modern fantasy’s interest in Beowulf undoubtedly contributed to bringing the medieval poem and its characters out of academia to invest in popular culture.
We learn in The Hollywood Reporter that the American director Robert D. Krzykowski is working on an adaptation of Grendeladapted from the eponymous novel by writer John Gardner published in 1971. This novel told us about Beowulf’s fight against Grendel from the monster’s point of view. The feature film is produced in collaboration with the Jim Henson Company, which reinvests fantasy after the success of the series Dark Crystal: Age of Resistancebroadcast in 2019 on Netflix. The participation of the Jim Henson Company justifies our interest; it’s a real stamp since the studio has worked on works as famous as the Muppet Show, Labyrinth et Dark Crystal.
The cast of the film Grendel has been revealed and it is particularly attractive. Actor Jeff Bridges, best known for his role in The Big Lebowski by the Coen brothers, will play the role of Grendel. That of the hero Beowulf was entrusted to the wrestler Dave Bautista, who since Guardians of the Galaxy of James Gunn has become a leading actor, having recently been seen in Dune by Denis Villeneuve. Finally, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcolm) will play the role of Danish King Hrothgar. Note also that Grendel will be the narrator of his own adventure, as explained by Robert D. Krzykowski in the columns of THR.
Very promising, this new feature film is announced in a context where fantasy is taking up more and more space in Hollywood. While Warner Bros. Discovery capitalizes on the world of Lord of the Rings including the announcement of the feature film The Hunt for Gollumdirected by Andy Serkis and produced by Peter Jackson, the movie Grendel could be a strong competitor, benefiting both from the fame of Tolkien’s universe but also from the “independent film” label.
If this article interested you, we strongly recommend that you discover our Good To Know centered on the character of Gollum. You will learn in particular the relationship between the character of Lord of the Rings and the monster of the poem Beowulfas well as how he himself inspired the Beatles and the group Led Zeppelin.
