The country of New Zealand has become synonymous with The Lord of the Rings, thanks to its vast array of varied landscapes and evocative environments used in Peter Jackson’s two J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired trilogies over the past twenty years. Amazon has been cagey about where it would set up camp for its upcoming The Lord of the Rings prequel TV series, but this afternoon, the company has revealed that showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have chosen to also use New Zealand as a stand-in for the fictional land of Middle-earth. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, September 4th, 2019 by Ben Pearson
Will Poulter, the 26-year-old English actor who appeared earlier this year in Midsommar and last year’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, is heading to Middle-earth. Poulter has snagged one of the lead roles in Amazon’s ambitious (and ultra-expensive) The Lord of the Rings television series, joining Australian actress Markella Kavenagh. Read More »
Major primetime television shows used to feature 22-24 episodes in a season, but in the era of Peak TV, smaller episode counts have become the new normal for prestige shows. But Amazon’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings TV series may be looking to change that. According to Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, who’s on the payroll for the new series, The Lord of the Rings season 1 will be comprised of 20 episodes.
Read his comments below, including a fascinating breakdown of which parts of Tolkien’s stories are “off limits” in the series. Read More »
Last summer, Amazon was able to announce the showrunners for their The Lord of the Rings series, Patrick McKay and JD Payne. But since then, news on Lord of the Rings has been largely kept in shadow, with a few images of maps and the announcement of one potential cast member in Markella Kavenagh.
Today’s Amazon executive session at the Television Critics Association press tour was another opportunity for a few more incremental updates. Find out more about their planned location, scripting, and casting below, and learn what Amazon executives said about another season of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. Read More »
Amazon paid $250 million just for the rights to make a The Lord of the Rings TV series, and that investment is finally starting to pay off. The show isn’t set to debut for a long while (casting has barely begun at this point), but the show’s Twitter account has revealed a new behind-the-scenes video announcing several key members of the writing staff and crew. When this prequel series finally does arrive, it’ll do so via the talents of people who have worked on some of the biggest and best movies and TV shows of the past several years. Check out the roster below. Read More »
Amazon is busy at the forge with its Lord of the Rings projects. On top of the highly anticipated The Lord of the Rings prequel series being produced for Amazon Prime Video, the company’s game division is developing a massively multiplayer Lord of the Rings video game that will be free-to-play for both PC and consoles.
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The Lord of the Rings may be a classic of high fantasy storytelling, but Amazon Studios is tapping a horror director to helm its highly anticipated TV series adaptation. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom filmmaker J.A. Bayona has been tapped by Amazon as the Lord of the Rings series director for the first two episodes of the big-budget drama. He’ll be the first director to tackle J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels after the formidable Peter Jackson made his mark with the acclaimed Lord of the Rings films.
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From what we can tell, Amazon’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings prequel television show will be set hundreds of years before the hobbit Smeagol discovered Sauron’s One Ring and began his tragic transformation into the miserable creature known as Gollum, but that character is about to get the spotlight in a new Gollum video game. German video game developer Daedalic Entertainment announced a new game called The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, which will be a prequel set years before Gollum loses his precious to Bilbo Baggins in a dark cave.
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Only Lord of the Rings could get their fans whipped into a frenzy over a map. But Amazon knows this, and cleverly went with an advent calendar-style release of a map of Middle-earth to reveal…the setting.
The Lord of the Rings series setting, which Amazon confirmed to be the Second Age of Middle-earth, may only be vaguely interesting for casual fans, but for mega-fans, just seeing the word “Numenor” is enough to launch a thousand excited tweets. (Really, just check out the replies on the Lord of the Rings Twitter.) Let’s dive into the significance of the Second Age setting and find out what the hell Numenor actually is.
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Cool Posts From Around the Web:
Don’t knock the Lord of the Rings nerd: the seminal high fantasy series was created by a young, hot man who apparently looked a lot like Nicholas Hoult. The Favourite actor stars in the upcoming biopic Tolkien as a young, good-looking J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of The Lord of the Rings series and the highly imaginative creator of the world of elves, hobbits, and dragons that have captured the minds of generations. See the Tolkien first look below. Read More »
