Amazon's 'The Lord Of The Rings' Show Casts 'Years And Years' Actor Maxim Baldry
Amazon Prime Video's uber-expensive and highly-anticipated The Lord of the Rings show has found another cast member.
English actor Maxim Baldry, best known for his role on the HBO series Years and Years, is the latest to board the series, and he'll be joining Will Poulter (Midsommar, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) and Australian actress Markella Kavenagh (Picnic at Hanging Rock). Read more about the new show below.
Collider brings news about Baldry's participation in the new show, and the outlet says that he's locked down a "significant role" in the series. Naturally, they don't have any information about Baldry's character, since details about the new show are being kept under tight protection. (The writers had to use fingerprint scans to even get into the writers' room, which had all its windows taped up to avoid prying eyes.)
Baldry appeared in Mr. Bean's Holiday when he was a kid back in 2007, and has since shown up on shows like HBO's Rome and the British soap opera Hollyoaks; he's also among the several other talented performers to come out of the UK series Skins. But he's broken out a little with his recent role on HBO's Years and Years, where he plays a Ukrainian refugee who develops a romantic relationship with one of the male members of the show's main family who works as a housing officer in Manchester. It's a supporting role that frankly hasn't given him enough to leave much of a lasting impression.
This casting continues to signal that Amazon is going after talented young up-and-comers who aren't household names yet. That approach makes sense considering that the company reportedly spent $250 million for the rights to the property alone, and that's before they even spent a single dollar to begin developing the show.
The Lord of the Rings series is set in author J.R.R. Tolkien's Second Age, an era set long before the primary events of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. One of the people associated with the show has said that Amazon only has the rights to depict events that occurred in the Second Age, meaning that unless they secure additional rights, they won't be jumping forward in time to depict any events we're familiar with from either Tolkien's trilogy or Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie adaptations.JD Payne and Patrick McKay are overseeing this series, which has locked down J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) to direct multiple episodes in the first season, which is reportedly going to include 20 episodes, marking a distinct change from prestige television's trend toward lower episode counts. You can check out a complete list of the behind-the-scenes talent here, which features several producers from shows like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. The show does not have a release date yet.