By Though it may be minor, a first look at Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series has been released, bringing with it the promise of the most expensive season of television of all-time, and an expanded pantheon of adventures in Tolkien’s seminal world of wonder. I mean, just look at that horizon and tell me it isn’t worth half a bil!
All sorts of Middle Earth magic to uncover there, I’ll wager!
The series, which has already had a second season ordered, will premiere to Amazon Prime Video September 2, 2022, with a weekly episode schedule (You shall not binge!). Amazon has also provided an official synopsis, detailing the prequel series’ Second Age:
“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.”
After a pandemic-hampered New Zealand shoot, The Lord of the Rings has wrapped principal photography on its first season. It’s also without an official title just yet, so for now it’s “the Lord of the Rings series” still. The series’ premiere episodes are directed by Jurassic World director JA Bayona, with scripts from showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay.
In the wake of Game of Thrones and Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films, the upcoming series has a captive audience for big, magical fantasy on a titanic budget. Naturally Amazon is banking on the success of The Lord of the Rings, but if there were a sure bet to be made, Baggins can bag ’em. Sort of; his far-flung ancestors, maybe.
Stay tuned for more!
Sources: IndieWire; Tweet by @LOTRonPrime