Here's What We Know About Amazon's ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series
Lord of the Rings fans have been eagerly awaiting any news to come out about Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings series. News has, so far, been few and far between. Even though there has been some filming and lots of pre-production going on, not much has been announced. However, in the recent months, more information has been coming out about what fans might expect to see in this Amazon Prime series. Here is a brief summary of what we have learned so far about The Lord of the Rings series headed by showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne.
Amazon is reportedly spending around $500 million on the series and already has a five- season contract, meaning that there will be no want for content. This is also an unprecedented investment in a television series.
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In August, Amazon officially announced that the release date for the show would be September 2, 2022, which, to many fans, cannot come soon enough. Along with this announcement, they posted an elusive photo showing a character, possibly an elf (as some have speculated), staring off into the sunset over a city (which may or may not be ruins).
Along with this announcement, we learned that filming has wrapped in New Zealand. The show had not officially given a title yet, so it is still being called The Lord of the Rings series by many fans. After many rumors, we also had some pretty significant confirmation that the show would be taking place in the Second Age of Middle-Earth, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Here is the official press release by Amazon Studios with the details.
“The highly anticipated, yet-to-be titled Amazon Original The Lord of the Rings television series will premiere Friday, September 2, 2022 on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide, with new episodes available weekly. Filming of Season One completed today in New Zealand.
The new epic drama brings to screens for the very first time J.R.R. Tolkien’s fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. Beginning in a time of relative peace, thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.
Headlining this ensemble cast are Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Weyman, and Sara Zwangobani.
The series is led by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay; they are joined by executive producers Lindsey Weber, Callum Greene, J.A. Bayona, Belén Atienza, Justin Doble, Jason Cahill, Gennifer Hutchison, Bruce Richmond, and Sharon Tal Yguado, co-executive producer Wayne Che Yip, director Charlotte Brändström, and producer Christopher Newman.”
The day after the release of the image OneRing.Net confirmed that this image is an actual shot from the first episode of the series, which will be directed by J.A. Bayona. Speculation immediately started as to who that might be in the image and where they are in Middle Earth (or even, outside of Middle Earth such as the fabled Valinor). Since the release of this image, many rumors have been circulating, but sources have yet to confirm who the person in the image is.
Later on in August we learned that the entirety of season 1 has been shot in New Zealand. Pre-production has also started for the filming of season 2. However, it will not be shot in New Zealand, but rather in the United Kingdom. Some fans may be disappointed, but J.R.R. Tolkien is, of course, from Britain, and wrote the saga with the British countryside in mind. Thus, Britain does have the potential to be just as beautiful as New Zealand in terms of keeping to the feel of the places in Middle Earth. On the other hand, season 2 may not be exclusively filmed in the U.K. Below is the press release for this statement.
“Amazon Studios announced today that its untitled The Lord of the Rings original series will film Season Two in the United Kingdom (U.K.). The shift from New Zealand to the U.K. aligns with the studio’s strategy of expanding its production footprint and investing in studio space across the U.K., with many of Amazon Studios’ tentpole series and films already calling the U.K. home.
The highly anticipated The Lord of the Rings series recently wrapped principal photography on Season One in New Zealand and is scheduled to premiere on Prime Video in more than 240 countries around the world on Friday, September 2, 2022.
We want to thank the people and the government of New Zealand for their hospitality and dedication and for providing The Lord of the Rings series with an incredible place to begin this epic journey,” said Vernon Sanders, VP and Co-Head of TV, Amazon Studios. We are grateful to the New Zealand Film Commission, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Tourism New Zealand, Auckland Unlimited, and others for their tremendous collaboration that supported the New Zealand film sector and the local economy during the production of Season One.” Season One post production will continue in New Zealand through June 2022, and pre-production on Season Two will begin concurrently in the U.K. after the first of the year.”
At the end of August, rumors on Fellowship of the Fans (FOTF) Twitter lead to some speculation about dwarven characters in the series. According to their sources:
“Actor Robert Aramayo was on the production’s dwarven sets and filmed scenes with the dwarves.
Actor Owain Arthur plays an important dwarven character in the same scenes.
The dwarves wear ‘amazing dragon/dragon scale armour.’
The dwarven king is said to look strikingly similar to Tormund from the HBO Game of Thrones series.
Scenes in the first two episodes will show dwarves climbing a mountain, or ravine, and there is an ‘underground pub set piece.’”
Whether or not any of this is true or merely speculation remains to be seen since Amazon Studios has not released anything official concerning dwarves. If dwarves were indeed part of this series, it stands to reason, timeline wise, that the dwarves in question would be Durin and the early dwarves of Middle Earth.
In mid-September, more news arose that got fans buzzing with excitement. Deadline and Entertainment Weekly, along with OneRing.Net announced that Howard Shore, the composer for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit soundtracks, will be back to compose the soundtrack for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series. Joining him will be Bear McCreary who is famous for his composition work on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Outlander, just to name a few. The announcement of bringing Howard Shore back to the world of Middle Earth is a good indication that Amazon is definitely trying to find a way to bring the magic and aesthetic of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to their own series. Anyone who has heard Shore’s magnificent LOTR soundtrack will definitely agree. In an interview with Loot Crate in 2019, Howard Shore did express interest in coming back to work with Middle Earth again.
“I spent so many happy years traveling through Tolkien’s world. If I was able to return and explore a bit more in a creative environment, I would be very interested to do so.”
I am sure he jumped at the chance to do so.
The last bit of news came in early October. Lenny Henry gave an interview with BBC Radio about his career, and talked briefly about being a part of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series. He spilled quite a bit of information, perhaps more than Amazon would have liked, and it had the fans in an excited frenzy.
The rumors started to come in, with TheOneRing.net reporting that Lenny Henry was going to be playing a character that is short in stature. Perhaps a dwarf king, or a hobbit. The rumors landed on one of the Harfoot hobbits in Tolkien’s world of the three “tribes” of early halflings that were a part of Middle Earth. They were described in The Silmarillion and other unfinished works.
Lenny Henry’s interview revealed more interesting news about the series as well as his own announcement.
“For the last two years I’ve been working on Lord of The Rings and it’s an extraordinary thing. It’s the biggest television show that’s ever been made, in terms of money and head count. Literally, a hundred people on set glaring at you and trying to work out what you’ll look like four feet tall… I’m a Harfoot, because J.R.R. Tolkien, who was also from Birmingham, suddenly there were black hobbits, I’m a black hobbit, it’s brilliant, and what’s notable about this run of the books, its a prequel to the Age that we’ve seen in the films, its about the early days of the Shire and Tolkien’s environment, so we’re an indigenous population of Harfoots, we’re hobbits but we’re called Harfoots, we’re multi-cultural, we’re a tribe not a race, so we’re black, asian and brown, even Maori types within it. It’s a brand new set of adventures that seed some of the origins of different characters and it’s going to take at least ten years to tell the story. Because it’s based on The Silmarillion which was almost like a cheat-sheet for what happens next in this world in the Second and Third Ages. And the writers have a lot of fun in extrapolating it all out, and it’s going to be very exciting. There’s a very strong female presence in this, there’s going to be female heroes in this evocation of the story, there’s going to be little people as usual.”
When Amazon announced what is most likely a partial cast list, Sir Lenny Henry was one of the bigger names on there due to his work in Britain as a comedian, author, thespian, and the creator of Red Nose Day and the Comedy Relief charity programs.
Some fans were upset with Lenny Henry’s casting announcement due to the fact that they believed that Tolkien did not have “black hobbits” in his work. However, that is not true as evidenced by some very quick descriptions found in the prologue to Fellowship of the Ring titled “Concerning Hobbits.”
Also, Harfoots (Hobbits) were definitely around near the Second Age and into the Third Age as briefly mentioned in Appendix B: The Tales of Years for the Third Age Year 1050 which states, “The Periannath are first mentioned in records, with the coming of the Harfoots to Eriador.”
It is very exciting that Lenny Henry told BBC Radio about the main source material for this Amazon series being The Silmarillion. It had been alluded to for a long time, but never confirmed. Now that it has pretty much been confirmed, rumors and speculations are flying all over the place. Further confirmation of this comes from other cast members showing off their copies of The Silmarillion on Instagram. From Lenny Henry’s announcement and from what we do know thus far it seems that a lot is packed into the series, not unlike how many centuries are packed into The Silmarillion itself. It will be interesting to see what shows up on screen.
This is huge as the Tolkien Estate has never let anyone use any source material from The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales before. Peter Jackson was not allowed to mention the any wizards other than Gandalf and eventually Radagast because he showed up in The Hobbit. The fact that the Tolkien Estate has given Amazon so much license is cause for excitement and concern for some fans. However, fans can all agree that despite some reservations about this series, it will be certainly be an absolute work of art that is bigger than anything we have probably ever seen before. And that is something to be excited about!
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Source(s): TheOneRing.net [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], Entertainment Weekly