This autumn sees the launch of the much awaited, and very expensive, Lord of the Rings series.
Amazon’s streaming service, Prime Video, has become an ever bigger and more important player in the market (partly through big acquisitions), and most recently this autumn they released the epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time.
But Jeff Bezos & Co have yet to come up with a series success equivalent to HBO’s Game of Thrones, Netflix’s Bridgerton or Disney’s The Mandalorian. On September 2nd, that will probably change.
The epic series has got its official name:
“The Lord of the Rings – The Rings of Power”
Today Prime Video releases the first trailer:
The series is based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), who wrote, among other things, fantasy novels:
- The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
- The Two Towers (1954)
- The Return of the King (1955)
All three were excellently filmed by Peter Jackson in 2001-2003.
If you’re of the opinion that the feature films weren’t long enough (11:22 in extended edition), then you can seriously look forward to the series being released in just under eight months.
The new series, however, is not a re-imagining of Peter Jackson’s well-known trilogy, instead the action takes place in Midgard’s so-called second age, which in Tolkien’s universe is several thousand years before the events of the books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
According to the press release, the series:
…follow an ensemble of characters both familiar and new, confronting evil’s long-feared rebellion in Midgard (…) and taking viewers back to an era when great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by a thread, and one of the greatest villains to ever stream from J.R.R. Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover the whole world in darkness.
The new series will be one of the most expensive ever produced. According to The Verge, the first season has cost around $ 465 million. In addition, Amazon has shelled out about 2.2 billion to Tolkien’s descendants for the TV rights to the Lord of the Rings universe; it’s a shame the main axeman has deep pockets.
The shooting has mainly taken place in New Zealand, and Amazon promises that there will be more seasons. The series creators are Patrick McKay and John D. Payne.
Among the actors we’ll see in Amazon’s blockbuster 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 Lord of the Rings – The Ring of Power will premiere on Prime Video in 240 countries on Friday 2 September. It will release one episode a week.
