Give my regards to Mordor...
In the entertainment world, there are a lot of good ideas that turn out to be not such great ideas after all (eg, Star Wars prequels: yes, I still love ROTS. But honestly, George, why mess with perfection?). Then there are seemingly bad ideas that turn out to be brilliant. The best example is - quick! guess what I'm going to say! - Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation. It's hard, from the perspective of 17 academy awards and 3 billion dollars, to remember that before the first film's 2001 debut, many were calling New Line Cinema's project an incredible gamble ("unfilmable book, very expensive, shooting all three films at once, who are these actors anyway, magic and midgets...yada yada yada"). I admit, even I was nervous when I heard this was being attempted ("Are they going to ruin my book?"). Against all odds, this gamble turned out to be a frickin' amazing film feat that you don't have to be an incredible geek like me to love.

And yet...there are other kinds of ideas. Just because something looks like a bad idea does not mean it is actually a good idea! I'll just cut to the chase: someone has decided to make an LOTR musical.

The show will open in March and run exclusively in Toronto through the summer of 2007. The NYT reports that the Ontario government has signed on as investors in this production, which at $23 million is more costly than any Broadway show.

"It has the gravitas of Tolkien," says the producer. It's a MUSICAL, says me.

True, the book is loaded with songs -- hobbit walking songs, elven songs both joyful and sad, the hey-dols of Tom Bombadil -- 95% of which were missing from the films. These might translate into stage numbers. Then again, they might not.

True, the producers have made it clear they are adapting the book, not the film, and are doing everything differently from the film. Fine. But they also cite the success of the film as motivation for their show. Now, pretty much everyone liked the movies. Lots of people loved the movies. So people have probably watched them a lot. And gone out to read (or re-read) the book. And bought toys and games and stationary and costumes and popcorn tins until they were blue in the face. Am I suggesting that the public might be a little OD'd on LOTR? Well, maybe. For fanatics, even the skeptical ones, a musical holds interest even after the (beautiful) deluge of middle earth mania that would have had Tolkien rolling in his grave has finally passed. For normal people, it might feel like a cheesier, more expensive round of been there done that.

I hope this goes well. What I don't want is for LOTR to suffer the kind of backlash Titanic suffered even in its own theatrical run. If this musical flops it will damage the reputation of a great story that was lucky to have fallen into the right hands for film adaptation (can you imagine if Lucas or even Spielberg had tried it?). Again: don't mess with perfection.