What is the future outlook for fantasy films?

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From The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, which ended back in 2003. The Harry Potter series that's ending this summer 2011. The Chronicles of Narnia series practically over, or you can say it won't be same because the original cast won't be in the future films (only cameos). I'm aware of the The Hobbit in it's two-part series in production as we speak.
What famous fantasy book series do you believe will become the next big movie series? It looks bleak because the greatest ones have already been chosen and gone.
 
Well, George R.R. Martin is being hail as the new American Tolkien, but his series (A Song of Ice and Fire) has just started airing as an HBO show, so it's not likely to become a movie anytime soon.

Other than that, I don't really see any other big contenders for LOTR's and HP's spot. Sure, The Hunger Games, The Pretties (or is it Uglies?), etc. are all really popular and going to be made into movies, but I don't think they're the international phenomenon powerhouses that LOTR and HP are. I guess we'll see, but my bet is that, after Hollows: Part II and The Hobbit wrap up, there's going to be a big hole in the market. Certainly not for lack of quantity in candidates...I mean, the market's flooded in fantasy right now, but for lack of "on parr" quality.
 
I think that there are certainly contenders who can pick up the gauntlet dropped by the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises. Unfortunately, it's that mysterious combination of the popularity of the book and the quality of the movie that will color the landscape of the future of fantasy cinema. Logical successors like the Lemony Snicket books and the "His Dark Materials" trilogy stalled out for various and sundry reasons. Eragon and The Last Airbender were pretty soundly panned by critics and audiences alike, making franchises pretty unlikely. Narnia is chugging along, but (as you say) the series is pretty far along and the majority of the movies will focus on characters other than the Penvensies from the first three films, thus making it a challenge to keep the interest of the moviegoer through four more movies (particularly given the gradually diminishing returns of the first three).

The logical successor from the "Harry Potter" end of things would be the Percy Jackson books. A sequel has been greenlighted and that sequel won't have the Potter films to compete with this time around.

As for more adult-oriented sword-and-sorcery, the success or failure of the Hobbit films will likely determine how willing studios will be to pony up the cash for similar efforts. Some good areas to explore would be the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, the Pern novels, and Terry Brooks' Shannara and Kingdom of Landover novels.
 
Definatly going to be the hunger games and along with that the mortal instruments film is going to be big

fantasy will never end there is to much of a market for it and all the major franchises tend to be fantasy.. harry potter, twishite e.t.c
 
"It looks bleak because the greatest ones have already been chosen and gone".

So nobody will ever again write a great fantasy story? That's it? Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a genius, but he's just a man. Someone can match or top him.
 
Thumbed up Kitty there for that answer, Tolkien in the end of the day was just a man. The problem is people look at The Lord of the Rings as the 'benchmark' trilogy, the pioneer of high fantasy/epic fantasy. We're getting a lot of pretenders and copy cats emerging, primarily because the Lord of the Rings films brought to light the scope of the film/books.

Hollywood in the end will cash in on the 'market trend' they'll look for the next Lord of the Rings, but the finances to back that ultimately might not be there. And to be honest, I think there's too many pretenders who are copying Tolkien who are published at the moment to make the ground breaking new franchise or film, but these copiers could be their books made into films. However, look at Avatar, biggest grossing film of all time, surpasses Titanic, i'd watch James Cameron to be honest, because he's looking to the east (metaphorically) in the japanese markets of manga and anime. He's going to make Battle Angel Atila allegedly, those sort of films, the sci fi punk Japanese visual films could be 'the next big thing.' Because they aren't clearly or distinctly 'fantasy' its more speculative fiction and science fiction, and to be honest fantasy has been bleed to death, speculative fiction and more science fiction could be root to go down to or the future of fantasy films and books too.
 
The Hunger Games is a big deal in up-and-coming films. I suppose you might call that scifi rather than fantasy, but they tend to be lumped into the same category, and since it's soft science fiction I think it easily crosses over into the fantasy realm.

If we wait a little while, Dragon Riders of Pern might become cool again. That's a movie I would like to see done well. A re-make of Dune would also be amazing (granted, again with the distinction between soft scifi and fantasy).
 
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