It will be interesting to see how this progresses. Regardless of someone's stance on the PJ cinematic version, for a LOT of people, his version is THE version that they will compare all future versions against. Love it or hate it, that is one helluva yardstick to be measured against, regardless of how long ago these films were made ; not trying to be arrogant, but even after 40 years no-one has been foolish enough to try & remake Star Wars yet.
Okay we all know that PJ attracted a lot of criticism for certain alterations, but these could be argued as necessary to keep the story moving on-screen. Even on a TV series it would be impossible to replicate the Lord of the Rings to be almost 'word-perfect' as per the books - I have always loved the books, but there are certain chapters where there is far too much or far too little detail on what has occurred (such as the battle of Helm's Deep being the latter).
Personally I hope that the producers use their sense and create something original from the professor's other works, rather than risk falling flat on their face by remaking the 3 films as a serial, when this just doesn't need to happen.
I would love to see the back story of Thranduil, Beorn & Beornings or other less 'filled-in' races and characters from Middle-Earth told in the style of 1 or 2 hour episodes, similar to Xena or Hercules in the 90's (interestingly, a lot of actors & crew that worked on these series also starred in LOTR...). How about episodes concerning the arrival of the 5 wizards at the start of the third age? Or how Elendil & Gil-Galad forged the Last Alliance? Now if something like this could be brought to life on the small screen, I would bet there would be a lot of fans over the moon
