You might be able to drink your fancy ales very soon again with new ‘Lord of the Rings‘ projects coming to television in the near future. That’s right. J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate is looking to make more money by selling the rights to ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ universe on television for a potential series. The word around the water-cooler is that the estate is looking for $200 or more million for just the rights. That means $200 million just to have the okay to make the series, not including any production costs, casting, paying actors, or anything.

It’s just the rights, making this potential deal the biggest in history. It’s estimated that after the more than $200 million rights price-tag that each season will cost around $125 million each for the show. I can’t even begin to fathom that. I’m hearing that HBO, Amazon, and Netflix have been pitched to purchase the rights, which makes sense, because all have enough money to do this and since ‘Game of Thrones‘ is about to be over, the rush for another fantasy series in top priority. I’m also hearing that the expensive rights to this series is limited, meaning that not all characters will be included in the rights, which makes no sense at all.

This potential ‘Lord of the Rings‘ series will be produced in a partnership with Warner Bros., since they distributed the original films. We have three ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies and three ‘Hobbit‘ movies now. Where does the tv show take place? Does it follow Samwise on his adventures or will it be a remake? Or will it act as a prequel, following the Silmarillion? Nothing is know right now, because there has been no creative development yet. It’s just been a race to secure the rights to make it.

Which ever network or streaming service decides to wear that one ring to rule them all, it will come at a hefty price. We’ll see shortly what comes of all this. Until then, we can think of all the fun ways to cook potatoes.

Written By: Bryan Kluger