Two different Tolkien biopics will compete for audiences

[Alcuin]

From the London Telegraph, 17 July 2014:

Though there’s only one instalment of The Hobbit film trilogy left to hit cinemas, it isn’t the last we’ll see of JRR Tolkien on the big screen. Two biopics, each covering different areas of the author’s life, are currently in production.

Tolkien is being developed by Chernin Entertainment for Fox Searchlight from a screenplay by David Gleeson, and will focus on his time at Oxford University and his experiences as a soldier in the First World War.

Tolkien & Lewis, meanwhile, will have a more religious angle, focusing on the friendship and rivalry between the Lord of the Rings creator and Narnia writer CS Lewis. The two authors both taught at Oxford University, and Tolkien helped to convert the previously agnostic Lewis to Christianity. Religious themes became a major influence on Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, and the success and acknowledgement he received for his Christian writings strained the two writers’ friendship.

Tolkien & Lewis is a smaller, independent film with an $18 million budget, and is being produced by Attractive Films. Simon West, director of Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2, has signed on to direct, with the film expected to arrive in Easter 2015.

Wernher Pramschufer, head of Attractive Films, said: "Lewis becoming the poster boy for Christianity upset Tolkien. And obsessive genius Tolkien is blocked, terrified of finishing The Fellowship of the Ring, for fear of the strange, psychotic visions which torture him."

Herr Pramschufer sounds as if he is rather loose with facts. Perhaps Tolkien was jealous of Lewis: I thought they fell out over Lewis’ marriage to an American divorcée. Perhaps Tolkien was “tortured” by “strange, psychotic visions,” but I have not heard of them before now.

There is little doubt that Tolkien and Lewis shared a friendly rivalry; nor that their friendship later cooled, more to the disappointment of Lewis than Tolkien. (I found an article on it here.) Tolkien disliked Narnia, and Lewis disliked hobbits, but I don’t think that was the cause of the rupture.

There is more coverage of the two upcoming films at Hollywood Reporter. It sounds as if one film shows Tolkien in a positive light, while the other is a negative depiction.

On 26 November 1963, Tolkien wrote his daughter Priscilla about the death of Lewis (who died the same day as US President John Kennedy; the except is from Letters of JRR Tolkien # 251),

… this feels like an axe-blow near the roots. Very sad that we should have been so separated in the last years; but our time of close communion endured in memory for both of us. … Douglas (Gresham) was the only “family” mourner. Warnie was not present, alas!

Douglas Gresham, who is still alive, is Lewis’ stepson. Warren Lewis (“Warnie”), Lewis’ brother, was an alcoholic. His brother’s funeral might have been too much for him to bear.

The next letter, to his son Michael, says,

… Jack Lewis's death on the 22nd has preoccupied me. … [M]any people still regard me as one of his intimates. Alas! that ceased to be so some ten years ago. We were separated first by the sudden apparition of Charles Williams, and then by his marriage. Of which he never even told me; I learned of it long after the event. But we owed each a great debt to the other, and that tie with the deep affection that it begot, remains. He was a great man of whom the cold-blooded official obituaries only scraped the surface, in places with injustice. … I was wryly amused to be told (D[aily] Telegraph) that “Lewis himself was never very fond of The Screwtape Letters”– his best-seller… He dedicated it to me. I wondered why. Now I know – says they.

[Varnafindë]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

Herr Pramschufer sounds as if he is rather loose with facts. Perhaps Tolkien was jealous of Lewis: I thought they fell out over Lewis’ marriage to an American divorcée. Perhaps Tolkien was “tortured” by “strange, psychotic visions,” but I have not heard of them before now.

The closest I can think of is a recurring dream that Tolkien had about a land sinking in the ocean (if I remember it rightly). It later turned out that Christopher Tolkien had had the same dream. It ended up in his writings as Numenor ...
But I think it sounds rather different from “strange, psychotic visions”
I agree with your view of Herr Pramschufer.

Douglas Gresham, who is still alive, is Lewis’ stepson. Warren Lewis (“Warnie”), Lewis’ brother, was an alcoholic. His brother’s funeral might have been too much for him to bear.

Not only did Tolkien then apparently attend the funeral, but he had also earlier in the year visited Lewis in hospital (source: Douglas Gresham). So it wasn't a complete break between the two, more that their friendship for a few reasons had faded away.

And the friendship had been viewed differently by them all along anyway. From what I read about them, it seems that Lewis was Tolkien's best friend, while Tolkien was one of Lewis' very good friends.

[Earniel]

Psychotic visions? Really? Sounds like I won't be watching either of them, then. I'm not a fan of war stories, and even less of religious ones with psychotic visions thrown in them to spice them up.

The man was a character if the Humphrey biography is anything to go by but he didn't really lead an exciting life.