The book has a bunch of gods(with one overarching God with a capital G) arrogant elves on a doomed quest. Humans don't show up until the first age of the sun and aren't really significant story wise until the downfall of numenor-the akallabeth and neither the quenta silmarillion proper nor the Akallabeth have happy endings. Tell me as Hollywood exec how exactly will handle these and ther issues without completely trashing the source material?
Well, some tweaking would probably be necessary as it is with most adaptations. For instance, a straightforward linear telling of the events probably wouldn't be the best way to go. Maybe they could have a split story format, with your cast of regular recurring characters that may be in the later days of the events, while the other half of the story tells the great historical events of the distant past in a way that's pertinent to the main story, with a constantly changing cast.
How do you explain then they film the ainulindale? The valaquenta? It would show a bunch of angels singing creating the world, then engaging a Satan figure for all intents and purposes. The akallabeth at the end has God destroying a continent and imprisoning a whole army in caves. While reshaping the world in the process? In today's post Christian ultra secular society how well will that do with audiences?
Folks seem to watch all sorts of shows with stuff like that. Lucifer, Supernatural, True Blood, The Lord of the Rings, they all seem to do pretty well. That's the funny thing about fiction. Suspension of disbelief, works for most people.
Okay how do you plan on depicting the timeless halls? The valaquenta? The CGI would either be very gratuitous or you would end up with it being more abstract and hence by definition for audiences to understand.
Folks in theater and cinema do stuff like that all the time. It's their job. Audiences come to see those stories, they have for ages. They come for an entertaining story. If the story is entertaining, the rest is largely inconsequential.
Your endless question thing not withstanding, there's nothing that fundamentally makes the Silmarillion unfilmable. Or make it unentertaining for people. Tragedy has always played well in film and theater.
