Warner Brothers releases trailer for LORD OF THE RINGS: WAR OF THE ROHIRRM

Warner Brothers have released the trailer for their animated film, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, set in the same continuity as Peter Jackson's live-action movie trilogy.

The film takes place about 250 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings and is the story of Helm Hammerhand, the ninth King of Rohan, at a time when his kingdom faced serious threats from within and without.

The film is directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), from a script by Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou. Philippa Boyens, who was a writer-producer on the Lord of the Rings live-action trilogy, is a producer on this project. Peter Jackson is loosely affiliated as a producer/consultant.

The film stars Brian Cox as Helm Hammerhand, Gaia Wise as Hèra, Luke Pasqualino as Wulf, Laurence Ubong Williams as Fréaláf Hildeson and Shaun Dooley as Freca. Miranda Otto reprises her film role as Éowyn, serving as the film's narrator.

The film will hit cinemas on 11 December this year.

Warner Brothers announce new LORD OF THE RINGS film for 2026

Warner Brothers has confirmed it is working on a new Middle-earth movie. Joining the six extant films (nine if you count the animated features from the 1970s and 1980s), the Amazon TV show and incoming animated feature War of the Rohirrim is Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

The new film will star and be directed by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Peter Jackson's movie trilogy. Lord of the Rings and Hobbit co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens will work on the screenplay, whilst Peter Jackson will produce and consult. New Line will helm the film for Warner Brothers, as it did the previous trilogies, and Weta will again provide visual effects.

The film has a tentative release date of "2026," suggesting that Warner Brothers will get the wheels moving on it soon.

The attention this year is on a cinematic re-release for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, overseen by Jackson, and animated film Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, the animated film is set 260 years before the original trilogy and tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, the Rohirrim king who defends his country from an army of Dunlendings. Brian Cox stars whilst Miranda Otto returns from the trilogy in the role of Éowyn, who is expected to provide voiceover narration. The movie is set for release on 13 December.

Amazon's wholly unrelated TV series The Rings of Power is expected to air its second season before the end of this year, after a mixed reception for its debut season.

Wertzone Classics: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The lands of Middle-earth are threatened by the forces of the Dark Lord Sauron, who only needs to find the missing One Ring to become unstoppable. Through an unlikely chain of events, the Ring has fallen into the possession of Bilbo Baggins, an unassuming hobbit of the Shire. After Bilbo retires, the Ring falls into the possession of his cousin Frodo. Finally realising the true nature of the Ring, the wizard Gandalf tells Frodo he must travel to Sauron's stronghold of Mordor and climb the volcanic Mount Doom, the only place where the Ring can be destroyed.

Reviewing The Lord of the Rings is a bit like reviewing oxygen, or Star Trek. People are probably already going to have read it, or decided not to. I can't imagine there's too many people sitting on the fence over it. Still, having just reread the whole thing, reviewing it is only polite.

The Lord of the Rings began life as a sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's children's novel, The Hobbit, originally published in 1937. The book rapidly spiralled out of Tolkien's control and foresight, becoming longer, darker and more epic. In truth, the book became more of a sequel to Tolkien's massive myth-cycle, the then-unfinished and unpublished Silmarillion (eventually published posthumously in 1977), adopting its epic themes but using the accessible relatability of the hobbits to make the book easier to swallow for a large audience. The Lord of the Rings was eventually published in three volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) in 1954 and 1955.

The impact of The Lord of the Rings cannot be overestimated. It codified the entire category field of modern epic fantasy, and Tolkien's imitators and successors are legion, as are those consciously rejecting his influence and doing something completely different. With sales estimates running from around 150 million to almost 400 million (the confusion caused by the novel's division into one-volume, three-volume and even seven-volume editions, and vast numbers of pirate editions published globally since the book came out), The Lord of the Rings is one of the biggest-selling individual novels of all time and has spawned a multimedia empire of radio, film and TV adaptations (of wildly varying quality).

Cutting through all of this chaff, what of the novel itself? How does it hold up in 2023? The answer is very well indeed, and in some respects the novel has aged better than expected. The explosion of massive epic fantasy series with individual volumes sometimes longer than The Lord of the Rings in its entirety (achieved by Tad Williams and Brandon Sanderson, and almost so by George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss) has inverted the old criticism of the novel. Rather than overlong and ponderous, as it was felt to be by many in the 1960s and 1970s (when most SFF novels clocked in at well under 300 pages), it now feels spry and economical with its pacing. The fact Tolkien delivered a single novel that tells a massive, sweeping and complete story (even reading The Hobbit is not necessary) with almost a dozen POV characters and spanning difference races, countries and an entire war, with incredibly detailed worldbuilding (most of it created just for this book; relatively little was inherited from The Silmarillion, which took place in a different region of Middle-earth), is pretty remarkable by modern standards.

The book opens in the bucolic Shire and, despite later rewrites, this section never shakes off its origin point as The Hobbit II: Somewhere Else and Back Again, Probably. There's laughter and good cheer and a lot of light and humour. But the book switches almost on a dime when Gandalf tells Frodo of the One Ring and sinister dark-hooded Riders arrive in the Shire. The initial flight from Hobbiton to Bree, with Frodo accumulating his loyal friends and allies Samwise, Merry and Pippin, remains a masterclass of building tension. The book takes a longueur at Rivendell, but it feels earned and is important for establishing the stakes of the story and establishing the Fellowship. The remainder of the first part is Tolkien delivering one epic set-piece after another, from battling wolves on the slopes of the Misty Mountains to almost dying on the slopes of Caradhras to the transition through the Mines of Moria to the battle on Amon Hen that leads to the splitting of the Fellowship.

As Tolkien himself acknowledged many years later, The Fellowship of the Ring is very different to The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The first instalment is lighter, pacier and more focused on a small, likable band of heroes engaged in an adventure. The latter two parts split the Fellowship into smaller sub-groups and sees them allying with larger powers (the nations of Rohan and Gondor) to fight Sauron's armies on the battlefield, at Helm's Deep and the Pelennor Fields. Tolkien is superb at building tension and delivering epic speeches but seems disinclined to dwell on the horrors of warfare up-close: those used to Peter Jackson's multi-hour action sequences based on those battles may be surprised by how concisely Tolkien deals with them on the page. He is more interested in the story and what happens to his characters than filling his pages with carnage. These latter two volumes remain fascinating and enjoyable, but they are drier. The moments of humour and cheer become sparser and Tolkien's prose becomes more academic, higher and more remote.

Tolkien is also an underrated master of horror. Throughout The Lord of the Rings he adeptly deploys horror tropes to scare the bejesus out of the Fellowship and the reader. This can be seen with the Black Riders in the Shire, the barrow-wights near the Old Forest and the descent through the Black Pit of Moria, and in the later confrontations with the great spider, Shelob, and the Army of the Dead. As China Miéville once said, Tolkien also gives great monster. Between Shelob, the balrog, the cave trolls and wargs, the book is replete with excellently-designed terrors.

Ultimately our heroes achieve their goals but the novel continues for another 100 pages after that, with the hobbits returning home to find that the war has not spared the home front and they have to undertake a final quest, this time by themselves without their powerful allies. For Tolkien, the Scouring of the Shire was a vitally important part of the novel about how, after taking part in a war and experiencing trauma, you can never quite go home again. This gives The Lord of the Rings its bittersweet complexity: the war is won but the damage it wreaks on the winners - or survivors - is palpable.

The novel has its weak points. Tolkien is a skilled poet in the short form but a more awkward one at length, and the novel features several verses that go on for several pages. Whilst the novel overall packs a ton of story, character and theme into a thousand pages, it does have moments where it slows down dramatically and takes a few pages to get going again. In-depth psychological characterisation is not something that Tolkien is really interested in, along with modern ideas about when to signify POV switches. This is not to say there is no characterisation, and indeed the hobbits in particular go through impressive character growth as the book develops, but it's less obvious than in many modern novels. The greatest exception is Gollum, who is torn by competing internal forces through the book as he strives for redemption but is tempted by a return to villainy.

A more valid criticism (both modern and contemporary) is almost the complete lack of female characters: Tolkien himself had already (by this point) developed important female characters in The Silmarillion who have impressive agency and play important roles in the story (such as Lúthien, Morwen, Nienor and Melian), but in Lord of the Rings the sole female character of almost any note is Éowyn. Tolkien did write more material for Arwen, but removed most of her story to the appendices. Other female characters (Galadriel, Goldberry, Rosie Cotton) appear only fleetingly. This does add to the WWI-esque atmosphere that develops, with women as a symbol of aspiration and home, but it's probably the area where the novel has aged the most poorly.

The Lord of the Rings (*****) is a titanic presence in the field of fantasy: no other single novel is as influential in its genre, even if it's perhaps less dominant these days than it used to be. It's easy to dismiss or write it off as old-fashioned or outdated, but this would be a mistake. Tolkien delivers a huge story about fighting the forces of darkness, both the overt and the subtle, and overcoming internal trauma, in a manner that remains compelling. At its best, his prose is rich and engrossing and his descriptions impressive, although the prose does become drier as the novel proceeds and some later sections lack the flair and energy of earlier chapters. But overall The Lord of the Rings remains a towering achievement of the genre and one that is worth reading.

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Embracer Group strikes new deal with Warner Brothers to make new LORD OF THE RINGS movies

In a fairly neat solution to what was threatening to become a legally complex entanglement of rights, Lord of the Rings movie rights-holders Embracer Group have forged a new deal with Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema to create new feature films derived from the novel.

Not Amazon but you get the idea.

The Lord of the Rings film rights were acquired from the Saul Zaentz Company by New Line in 1997 to create a feature film trilogy based on the novel. Peter Jackson directed this trilogy to tremendous acclaim, which was released from 2001 to 2003 (New Line's parent company is Warner Brothers). Warner Brothers teamed up with MGM, who owned part of the film rights to The Hobbit, to produce a prequel trilogy based on that novel ten years later. Last year, the film rights were set to lapse, reverting back to the Saul Zaentz Company. Warner Brothers had put an animated motion picture, War of the Rohirrim, into production and claimed this was enough to satisfy their legal requirement to get a film into production before the rights were due to lapse. The Saul Zaentz Company disagreed.

Whilst legal arguments were being thrashed out, the Saul Zaentz Company suddenly sold their Lord of the Rings-related rights to the Embracer Group, the Swedish multimedia mega-corp which has been hoovering up various comic book, video game and board game companies for the past decade. Exactly why Embracer would step into such a legal minefield before it had been resolved seemed unclear.

Except, of course, it is now clear. Embracer simply created a new deal with Warner Brothers and New Line, immediately resolving all legal questions and allowing everyone to move forwards with new projects.

What those projects might be is unclear. Today's statement includes a note that the companies have no interesting in mounting a remake of Peter Jackson's seminal movie trilogy. There are also rights complications with The Hobbit (MGM, now owned by Amazon, retain some of the rights to the project) and also a question over TV rights, since Amazon struck a separate deal with the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate to launch their first TV show, The Rings of Power, which launched last year to a mixed reception. There has been some suggestion that Warner Brothers might be able to create a Lord of the Rings-derived TV series as long as it stayed within even stricter legal boundaries than Amazon, but it's not been clarified what those could be.

Any further projects will have to derive from The Lord of the Rings alone, and probably in the cinema. It's possible that film-makers will tap the Third Age for more ideas of a show, maybe focusing on ides like the settling of the Shire, the war with the Witch-King of Angmar, the adventures of the young Aragorn or possibly picking up a story with some of the surviving film characters several decades on from the movie trilogy. Such projects will have to survive the withering scorn and cynicism of fans watching out for a cash-grab exploitation of Tolkien's material.

In the meantime, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim hits cinemas on 12 April 2024, whilst Amazon's Rings of Power is currently shooting its second season for a 2024 debut.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - Season 1

In the First Age, the great elven kingdoms made war on the Dark Lord Morgoth for his theft of the Silmarils, the greatest creations of the master craftsman Fëanor. In the War of the Jewels that followed, Morgoth was defeated and the north-west of Middle-earth laid waste and sunk beneath the waves. Although Morgoth his gone, his chief lieutenant, Sauron, survived and escaped. In the Second Age, Galadriel, whose brother Finrod Sauron murdered, has spent centuries trying to track him down, whilst her friends and her king urge her to put aside her quest. But other forces are moving. The Southlands are under renewed threat from the orcs, the dwarves of Khazad-dûm have made an amazing discovery deep under the Misty Mountains and the island kingdom of Númenor has become divided between those who would help Middle-earth and those who would remain isolated.

The Rings of Power is a television series five years in the making. Back in 2017, the Tolkien Estate relented in its decades-long practice of refusing to allow further adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's works beyond the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings he himself had sold back in 1969, entertaining pitches from several studios and streaming services. Having dismissed Netflix's proposal for a series of films and shows about individual characters ("MCU Middle-earth," as it appears to have been dubbed) and HBO's questionable idea of remaking the Jackson film trilogy (bold but unnecessary), they landed on Amazon's idea for a prequel series set in the Second Age of Middle-earth's history.

The Second Age is the period when the Dark Lord Sauron forged the One Ring and made war on the elven kingdoms, as well as the time of the expanding power of Númenor, the great island-empire of the western seas. It was also the height of power for the dwarves, whose great mountain kingdom of Khazad-dûm still stood strong, long before it was brought low and transformed into the shattered ruin of Moria. There is a rich vein of material here that could be mined to produce a compelling narrative.

Unfortunately, the first problem is that the Tolkien Estate did not give away any additional rights to The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, the two books in which about 90% of Tolkien's information and worldbuilding for the Second Age are contained. Amazon would have to proceed solely with the information they could glean from The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, which is distinctly lacking in comparison (the show occasionally uses isolated material from elsewhere in Tolkien's notes, and it's interesting that this has never been explained).

The other problem is that Tolkien did not ever write a novel about the Second Age. He did write histories, essays and lineages, not to mention an incomplete novella (Aldarion and Erendis, which again Amazon did not have the rights to) and answered dozens of letters expanding on reader questions about the time period, but there is certainly no analogue of The Lord of the Rings or even The Hobbit for the period. This meant that the writers would have to create most of the characters, dialogue, subplots and events themselves, with not much Tolkien material to fall upon, as opposed to the Jackson movies which transposed many entire Tolkien speeches to the screen verbatim.

The result is a show which is almost good, with frustrating glimpses of greatness that could have been reached with better access to the source material and better writing. The actors are all pretty solid, the ideas are often surprisingly good but the execution leaves much to be desired.

The show breaks its large story up into different subplots. We follow one storyline with Galadriel as our major POV character, as she goes hunting for Sauron, sets sail across the ocean, arrives on the island of Númenor and tries to forge an alliance. In a second storyline we visit the Southlands, which are divided between watchful elven guardians and resentful human villagers, as they are suddenly accosted by orcs. In a third, a mysterious stranger arrives in Middle-earth on a roaring star and befriends the Harfoots, a tribe of what will one day be called the Hobbits. In a fourth, the elf lord Elrond sets out to ally with the dwarves of Khazad-dûm to help create a forge for the elven master smith Celebrimbor, and gets embroiled in politics and mysteries within the kingdom.

The problem is that the show doesn't have enough time to explore all of these elements in depth. Eight episodes, even with several that cross the hour barrier, mean that many of the storylines have to be skimmed over, with superficial action replacing deep-rooted character exploration. There are some exceptions, such as the delightful "bromance" between Elrond and Prince Durin, but these are few and far between. Some elements, such as Galadriel's characterisation, are treated poorly. Galadriel is many thousands of years old at this juncture, a respected leader of the Noldor elves and a veteran of the wars against Sauron and Morgoth. Yet she is constantly belittled, marginalised and ignored, and her actions are often inexplicably arrogant, childish and violent, and sometimes self-contradictory. Perhaps if this was the story of the still-young Galadriel making her way to Middle-earth during the War of the Jewels, this characterisation would make more sense, but here it does not.

The pacing problem also extends to entire storylines: we spend three entire episodes building up to a significant battle sequence, with plenty of longueurs, but barely ten minutes on the forging of the actual first Rings of Power and the motivation for doing so (y'know, the title and point of the entire show). The show also expands a vast amount of time on playing musical chairs with mysterious characters, any one of whom might be Sauron or Gandalf (or another Wizard), which will be redundant the second the final episode airs and we get the answers to those mysteries.

The show also suffers from the decision to collapse two separate time periods - the forging of the One Ring and the diminishing of Númenor - into just a few years. Númenor is therefore somehow an isolationist, almost paranoid kingdom with no interest in affairs in Middle-earth but also has colonies and trade with the rest of the world to make it rich. The orcs are both a scattered, decimated people but also a numerous and imminent threat to the rest of the continent. It doesn't really make sense and the story would have been better-served by keeping to the original timeline, or at least compressing things into two time-frames with a single time-jump of 1800 years or so mid-series. This would have also had the beneficial side-effect of keeping the show more tightly focused on smaller casts of characters at a time, and giving more depth and weight to events.

Once you get over those problems - and they are not insignificant - there are some things to enjoy. The actors mostly give their all, and Morfydd Clark has impressive grace and presence as Galadriel even if her storyline and characterisation doesn't always make sense. The storyline with the dwarves is excellent, the highlight of the season, rooted in superb performances by Robert Aramayo (Elrond), Owain Arthur (Prince Durin), Sophia Nomvete (Disa) and an underused Peter Mullan (King Durin III). The storyline with the Harfoots is also surprisingly effective. I was expecting this to be awful, but the characterisation and worldbuilding of the Harfoots as a nomadic people worked quite well, and Markella Kavenagh gives a solid performance as lead Harfoot Nori. Having Hobbits crowbarred into a story where they don't really belong still feels jarring, but this is a good example of good execution making up for a poor idea (the reverse of most of the season).

Production design is mostly excellent, although both costumes and CGI can be variable. Some of the CG is very good but there's also a lot of the horribly overlit, plastic-looking CG which has come to plague the modern industry. Fans of Peter Jackson's miniatures and bigatures will find themselves wishing for more tangible, three-dimensional locations. They will also probably find themselves wishing for better use of the real vistas of New Zealand. Filming in New Zealand is a huge draw of the project, but scenes shot purely on location are relatively few and far between, with most nature shots involving CGI overlays and compositing to the point that there's almost no point to them being in New Zealand anyway (presumably why Season 2 has moved production to the UK instead), which is a crying shame.

There are other highlights: Joseph Mawle (Game of Thrones) is outstanding as the orc leader Adar, Bear McCreary's score is excellent (even if Howard Shore's main theme is forgettable) and some of the shots and depictions of events better-explored in The Silmarillion, like the epic battles of the War of the Jewels and the two Trees of Light standing over Valinor, are fantastic. The prosthetics and makeup for the orcs are also terrific, and a huge improvement over the abominable CGI orcs from the Hobbit trilogy. There is a sense of scale to events which does impress.

But the show's highlights are let down by its problems. The plotting is spotty and some of the Plot Macguffins are inexplicable (how does a sword hilt function as a key to release water to detonate a lava-bomb again? Who designed this thing, and when?). The pacing is too slow in some episodes and too fast in others. And all too often the writers would have benefitted from sticking closer to Tolkien's source material instead of running off to pull some weird new idea from the ether that doesn't work, at all. And we are long, long past the point that prequels need to just stop putting characters in jeopardy when we 100% know they are just fine and will be back later on.

The debut season of The Rings of Power (***) is certainly watchable, with some great performances, some excellent individual storylines and some tremendous production design and music. It is also variably-paced, has highly variable effects and the story and character arcs don't always make a lot of sense. But there are some good ideas here and the pieces of the story they've created are promising. They just need to be assembled with a lot more care and attention in later seasons. The season is available to watch globally on Amazon Prime Television now.

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Embracer Group buys Middle-earth Enterprises, acquires video game rights to Middle-earth and possible film rights

Middle-earth Enterprises, the rights-holding and media company for works related to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and, partially, The Hobbit, has been sold by its owners, the Saul Zaentz Company, to Swedish video game mega-company Embracer Group. The terms of the deal are unknown, but the Saul Zaentz Company previously valued the property at over $2 billion.

The history of the Middle-earth media rights is complex, but can be boiled down as follows: in 1968 J.R.R. Tolkien sold the screen rights and related merchandising rights to his novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) to United Artists. United Artists sold the rights to film producer Saul Zaentz in 1976, who in turn set up Middle-earth Enterprises to handle the deal. United Artists included the full rights to The Lord of the Rings but retained some of the rights to The Hobbit, on the basis that any film adaptation would start with the first book before moving onto the sequel. However, Zaentz circumvented this by producing an animated film based directly on The Lord of the Rings in 1978, with Ralph Bakshi directing. MGM bought United Artists in 1981, acquiring their rights to The Hobbit in the process. Although Bakshi's film was unsuccessful, its existence allowed Middle-earth Enterprises to licence merchandising, including video games, colouring books and so on, as long as they were nominally related to the Bakshi film. A legal clarification also allowed the company to produce spin-off merchandise derived from the novels in very narrow fields, allowing for video games based on The Hobbit and the book version of The Lord of the Rings to follow.

In 1997, New Line Cinema acquired the film rights to The Lord of the Rings from Middle-earth Enterprises. Negotiations with MGM over The Hobbit fell through, so Peter Jackson proceeded with a feature film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings by itself, released to critical acclaim and mass commercial success in 2001-03. The legal agreement between Middle-earth Enterprises/The Saul Zaentz Company allowed for New Line to retain the film rights as long as new films were produced or fresh agreements could be made, otherwise the rights would revert. New Line merged with Warner Brothers Pictures in 2008.

After very complex negotiations, a deal was struck between New Line Cinema, Warner Brothers, Middle-earth Enterprises and MGM to produce a movie trilogy based on The Hobbit. This reached the screens between 2012 and 2014 and was commercially successful, but critically derided. In 2017 the Tolkien Estate clarified that they retained television rights to the Middle-earth franchise and reached an agreement worth $250 million with Amazon Prime Television to produce a TV show based on the books. This show, The Rings of Power, debuts on Amazon on 2 September after almost three years in production. Amazon reached a deal with New Line/Warner Brothers to allow them to use some aspects of the visual design of the films if necessary.

In June 2021, Warner Brothers announced they were developing a new animated film, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, as a cinematic release. It was later claimed this was a rights-holding exercise, allowing Warner Brothers to retain ownership of the film rights for a further period of time. However, the Saul Zaentz Company argued that an animated film did not fulfil the terms of the contract. As a result, in February 2022, the Saul Zaentz Company and Middle-earth Enterprises announced they had regained control of the film rights and would be selling them off to the highest bidder, with a minimum price of $2 billion.

Warner Brothers subsequently argued that by putting The War of the Rohirrim into production, they retained the feature film rights to the franchise. It is believed the two companies then went into arbitration.

The news today, to some extent, kicks the can down the road. By selling the entirety of Middle-earth Enterprises to Embracer, the Saul Zaentz Company gets paid and basically leaves Embracer to make the legal arguments themselves.

The move certainly comes as a shock to the industry, who expected the sale to be delayed until the legal dispute had been resolved, and certainly did not expect an overseas video game company to swoop in and buy out the rights. With Amazon producing the Rings of Power TV show and having recently acquired MGM (and their rights related to The Hobbit), it was assumed that they would buy out the Saul Zaentz Company's rights. This move suggests that either Embracer offered far more money than Amazon were willing to pay, which seems highly unlikely, or Amazon decided it didn't want the extended franchise rights, which also seems unlikely. It'll be interesting to see what the explanation is for that.

In the meantime, Embracer have certainly acquired the video game rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Projects already underway, such as Daedalic Entertainment's upcoming video game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, are unaffected by the move.

Swedish video game company Embracer Group was founded in 2011 and began buying up smaller publishers and developers by the dozen, soon expanding into other media areas. As of August 2022, the company owns Dark Horse Media (owners of Dark Horse Comics), Asmodee (the owners of board game companies including Asmodee and Fantasy Flight), Gearbox Entertainment, THQ Nordic and Saber Interactive. Middle-earth Enterprises will continue to operate as a discrete company, with its video game operations to be handled in collaboration with Embracer Freemode. 

Amazon releases another RINGS OF POWER trailer

Amazon have released a new trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is now only six weeks away from airing.

The trailer is one of the more confusing that's been released so far, mainly because it surprisingly confirms that Sauron is in the season in a villainous role, already playing some kind of priest or religious figure. Although he does take up this role in the Second Age in Tolkien's books, it's not until near the end of the age when he is a prisoner on the island of Numenor. Here he seems to be in that role in Middle-earth many years earlier.

The trailer opens with Galadriel (Morfyyd Clark) placing an elven helmet on a very large pile of other elven helmets, declaring that the elves thought the war was over, a reference to the War of the Jewels in the First Age when the elves, humans and dwarves of Middle-earth fought against the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, a war which ended in Morgoth's exile from the world and the destruction of an entire subcontinent. Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) sets a laurel crown on Galadriel's brow and declares that the days of peace have begun. Galadriel then says they thought a time of peace, plenty and prosperity had come and would never end.

We then see clips from earlier trailers, where Harfoot chieftain Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry) declares that "the skies are strange," and we see a meteor ploughing across the sky. On the island of Numenor we see Tar-Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) showing a palantir to Galadriel, which Galadriel grasps. We see a flashback to the War of the Jewels, where Galadriel's brother Finrod (Will Fletcher) was slain, and Galadriel tending to her brother's body.

We are told that "evil does not sleep" and we get our first glimpse of Sauron (Anson Boon) as a white-clad human, apparently some kind of cult leader or religious figure (in the books, Sauron corrupts those around him by playing the role of a priest of Morgoth).

We also see King Durin III (Peter Mullan) talking to Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), something sure to rankle fans of the books, where each dwarven king named Durin is separated from the last by decades or centuries, and may be reincarnations of the same dwarf (so two of them being around simultaneously is an impossibility).

We see Galadriel in the ruins of a burning port and shots of an ominous evil castle (not Barad-dur, at least not yet). An old man claps the hand of a young boy called Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) and asks him if he has ever heard the name "Sauron."

We see orcs on the loose, Theo grasping a black sword that seems to form out of the air, a boat bursting into flames, Theo embracing his mother Bronwyn (Nanzanin Boniadi), orcs showing deference to a leader, Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) in Numenor and Bronwyn rallying a village. 

Most intriguing is a sequence where several elves are shown unsheathing their swords. It seems probable that this is a depiction of the Oath of Feanor, when Feanor, leader of the Noldor, and many of his sons and followers swore an oath to follow Morgoth to Middle-earth and recover the Silmaril jewels he had stolen. This event is depicted in The Silmarillion, offering further credence to the idea that Amazon has at least limited access to that book to depict events in this series.

We then see Galadriel boarding a ship, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) fighting various enemies, Tar-Miriel carrying a child, the dwarven Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) singing, Durin IV holding aloft an item of mithril, Bronwyn and Arondir together, Galadriel joining a Numenorean cavalry charge, orcs fighting in a forest, Galadriel escaping a shipwreck caused be a sea serpent, troops marching in Numenor, Durin IV leading dwarven warriors and Nori Brandfoot (Markella Kavenagh) helping the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) from a fiery crater.

We see more of Arondir fighting in a pit with orcs, Sauron casting some kind of spell and apparently speaking, "You have been told many lies of Middle-earth," Arondir being accosted in a forest (maybe by Ents?) and, finally, a Balrog roaring.

There's a lot going on in this trailer and the chronology seems confused: the name "Sauron" being openly bandied around is odd given that the elves of the First Age would know him by that name and seek his immediate destruction. Sauron also appears to be in his priest guise many years than was the case, even before the Rings of Power are forged. There's also a curious mix of styles: the palantir looks different to those in the Jackson trilogy, but the balrog is a dead ringer for the one in Moria in the movies.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on 2 September and hopefully will clear up these confused story points.

UPDATE: It's been clarified that Sauron does not appear in the trailer, and the "cultist" figure is another character played by Bridie Sisson. Anson Boon does play Sauron, presumably in his Annatar guise, but is not shown in the trailer.

Bear McCreary confirmed as THE RINGS OF POWER's composer, Howard Shore returning for the theme tune

Confirming news first leaked a year ago, Bear McCreary will be working on Amazon's Lord of the Rings prequel show The Rings of Power as its main composer, whilst the Lord of the Rings trilogy composer Howard Shore will return to pen the main theme tune.

McCreary's work on Battlestar Galactica was so acclaimed that he ended up performing to thousands of people in huge live shows.

McCreary rose to fame with his offbeat, atmospheric music for Battlestar Galactica. After working as an assistant on the 2003 mini-series he became the main composer for the show itself, staying with it all the way until its conclusion in 2009. He returned for spin-off shows and TV movies.

He also scored Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Walking Dead, Agents of SHIELD, Black Sails, Outlander, See, Snowpiercer and Foundation in television, and worked on films including 10 Cloverfield Lane and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. His video game work includes God of War and its upcoming sequel, and Call of Duty: Vanguard. He won an Emmy in 2013 for his work on the soundtrack to Da Vinci's Demons.

Amazon has released two full tracks from the soundtrack today: "Galadriel" and "Sauron," which I assume will be the leitmotifs for those respective characters. This may also be a minor spoiler, confirming Sauron will show up in the first season. That might feel like a given (Sauron is involved in the span of time that the show covers), but there was some speculation that Sauron might not show up until later. Both tracks are very good.

Amazon releases full trailer for THE RINGS OF POWER

Amazon have released the first full-length trailer for it's upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel TV series, The Rings of Power.

The trailer opens with a brief glimpse of the island kingdom of Numenor before it cuts to images of Galadriel (Morfyyd Clark). We get a voiceover:

"There was a time when the world was so young, there had not yet been a sunrise, but even then there was light."

We see a young elf cresting a hill to behold an elven city in the land of Valinor beyond the western ocean, when the elves and the godlike Valar dwelt together in the Elder Days. Beyond the city are the two fabled Trees of Light, golden Laurelin and silver Telperion. In this age the sun and moon do not exist, with instead the Two Trees filling the lands of Valinor with light but leaving the rest of the world, including the central continent of Middle-earth, in darkness.

These are actually images from the Elder Days, long before even the Second Age where the bulk of the series will be set.

Over singing, we see vignettes of different people in Middle-earth (including a glimpse of a giant eagle), over which another character (a Harfoot briefly glimpsed in other trailers) speaks.

"Elves have forests to protect, dwarves their mines, men their fields of grain, but we Harfoots have each other. We're safe."

We see what appears to be Rivendell (or at least an elven city of some kind), Khazad-dum and fields of wheat being harvest by men whilst Harfoots travel through a nearby forest. A flaming meteor then plunges from the sky and crashes near Elanor Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), heralding darker days for Middle-earth.

We then see a frozen wasteland, where Galadriel and other elves are tracking down the last remnants of the orcs and other surviving servants of evil from the First Age. We hear in voiceover, "You have fought long enough, Galadriel."

We then move to another location where Elrond Halfelven (Robert Aramayo) asks Galadriel to put up her sword. Galadriel is unimpressed.

"The Enemy is still out there. The question now is, where?" Elrond declares, "It is over," but Galadriel responds, "You have not seen what I have seen." "I have seen my share." "You have not seen what I have seen."

We see Galadriel and her expedition pass through ice caves into some kind of fiery subterranean location, where they seem to encounter a great evil which inflicts suffering on the group.

An impressive aerial shot of an elven city follows. This is probably Mithlond, better known as the Grey Havens, the chief port of the elven nation of Lindon in the far north-west of Middle-earth.

We then see a ship pass into the harbours of Numenor, a great island located in the ocean south-west of Middle-earth. Given as a land of gift to those humans who took the elven cause in the First Age, Numenor is now at the centre of an empire that spans much of the known world, with colonies and holdings in lands far beyond Middle-earth. The only place that is denied to the Numenoreans is fabled Valinor to the west. This ban is calmly accepted by most Numenoreans...but not all.

We then cut to Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), High King of the Elves, speaking to Elrond: "Darkness will march over the face of the earth." We cut to an army of orcs on the march. "It will be the end of not just our people, but all peoples."

We see Galadriel on a ship, and the Queen Regent of Numenor, Tar-Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) being surprised by what seems to be ash or snow falling from the sky.

We then cut to Elanor and her friend Poppy Proudfoot (Megan Richards), looking at a Stranger (Daniel Weyman) who seems bewildered to find where he is.

Elrond then visits the great dwarven city of Khazad-dum (which in later centuries will be known as Moria), here in its prime. King Durin III (Peter Mullan, reportedly) says, "I am sorry, but their time has come." We then see Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur) smashing a chunk of rock. We then see more of Galadriel's expedition getting into trouble on a glacier.

We then see Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) appearing in a public place in Numenor, the elven archer Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova), a mass cavalry charge led by Galadriel, Harfoots embracing and Isildur (Maxim Baldry) on a Numenorean boat.

"The past is with us all. But the past is dead. We either move forward or we die with it."

We see Galadriel riding along the coast, a crowd in Numenor cheering the Queen's advisor Pharazon (Trystan Gravelle), a young man practicing his jousting and Prince Durin IV holding aloft a piece of metal (mithril?) and declaring, "This could be a new beginning of a new era."

We then see four elves drawing swords in what appears to be a council chamber, and Arondir fighting off a warg in a forest, followed by Galadriel fighting an ice troll.

We then see the Stranger climbing out of a circular crater of fire. The trailer ends with four Harfoots striking out across country.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on 2 September on Amazon Prime.

Amazon releases new teaser for THE RINGS OF POWER

Amazon have released a new teaser for their upcoming Middle-earth TV series, The Rings of Power. The clip is available only on Amazon's website, here for the US and here for the UK.

The clip opens with the camera panning over majestic shots of Middle-earth before cutting to Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry), a senior member of the Harfoots, a wandering tribe of Hobbits (this is thousands of years before they settle the Shire). After studying ancient books, he announces, "the skies are strange."

We then see a meteor hurtling through the skies above Middle-earth, where it is seen by many people: Gil-galad, High King of the Elves (Benjamin Walker), Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Prince Durin IV of Moria (Owain Arthur), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), elven archer Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova), his lover Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), Tar-Míriel of Númenor (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and several Ents. 

The meteor finally crashes to the ground near another Harfoot, Elanor "Nori" Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), who seems curious and decides to investigate. A final shot follows, apparently of a ship sailing into one of the harbours of Númenor.

The Rings of Power is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth and, as the title indicates, tells the story of the forging of the Rings and the descent from a golden age of relative peace and prosperity into war as evil returns. 

A longer trailer for the series will be released on 14 July and the series itself will debut on 2 September.

New Middle-earth book announced for 2022

A new Middle-earth book is on its way. The Fall of Númenor will be published on 10 November 2022 and will recount the events of the Second Age of Middle-earth, accompanied by new artwork by popular Tolkien artist Alan Lee.

The book will be published an impressive forty-nine years after the death of J.R.R. Tolkien and almost three years after the death of his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien, who had been entrusted with the maintenance of his father's legacy after his death. Christopher published almost every single word his father ever wrote on Middle-earth, from the semi-complete story of The Silmarillion through numerous early drafts, incomplete short stories and esoteric worldbuilding essays on the most minor facets of live in Middle-earth. Much of this material was assembled in the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series and books like Unfinished Tales. A further volume, The Nature of Middle-earth, was published in 2021 with Carl F. Hostetter as editor. This book included more previously unpublished material by J.R.R. Tolkien and was produced with Christopher Tolkien's permission and approval.

This volume appears to contain no "new" information in the form of previously-unpublished material by Tolkien. Instead, it appears to contain all the narratives that Tolkien wrote about the Second Age, assembled into one handy volume. This will likely include The Akallabêth, the closing part of The Silmarillion dealing with the fate of the island kingdom of Númenor; the "Second Age" section of Unfinished Tales which contains an incomplete short story, "Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife," as well as a detailed genealogy of the kings and queens of Númenor and a map of the island; and the "Second Age" material from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. There is also some material in the History of Middle-earth series which may be included.

The book is clearly intended as a tie-in with Amazon Prime's The Rings of Power television series, which is set in the Second Age and is concerned with elements including the forging of the One Ring and the rise and fall of Numenor. That TV show hits screens on 2 September.

The Fall of Numenor is not the first "greatest hits" repackaging of material from less-accessible, scholarly works into an easier-to-read format. Christopher Tolkien himself re-edited material from those books into three narrative tomes aimed at the layman: The Children of Húrin (2007), Beren and Lúthien (2017) and The Fall of Gondolin (2018). The Fall of Númenor follows in that tradition.

The book is edited by Tolkien scholar and expert Brian Sibley, who previously wrote the early 1980s BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and served as a consultant on the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, penning several of the tie-in "making of" books, returning in that capacity for the later Hobbit trilogy. He also wrote the booklets accompanying John Howe's "maps of Middle-earth" series in the 1990s.

This book does mark a minor bit of history in Tolkien publishing, being apparently the first Middle-earth book to have been assembled and published without the permission or approval of either J.R.R. or Christopher Tolkien (although I suspect the latter would not have been entirely opposed, given his previous work). Tolkien fans will now be wondering what the future may hold in terms of similar "fixup" works being put together from other sources.

Feature film LORD OF THE RINGS: WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM set for April 2024 release, whilst Warner Brothers fights for the franchise film rights

With all the excitement over Amazon's Rings of Power TV series, it's easy to forget there's another cinematic slice of Tolkien also in production. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an animated film set roughly 250 years before the events of the movie trilogy and depicts the adventures of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary king of Rohan and the builder of the great fortress of Helm's Deep.

The film was announced last year, with Kenji Kamiyama directing for Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema and Sola Entertainment. Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote and produced the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie trilogies, is producing. Her daughter Phoebe Gittins and writing partner Arty Papageorgiou have written the script. Richard Taylor and John Howe, who worked on the art design for the previous live-action Middle-earth movies, are doing the same for this project. Peter Jackson has given the project his blessing.

However, a Variety article seemingly backs up speculation that the primary reason for making the film is so Warner Brothers can retain its hold on the franchise feature film rights, which they licenced from the Saul Zaentz Company in 1997 to enable production of the Peter Jackson films. Last week, the Saul Zaentz Company confirmed it had regained control of the film rights, which they claim lapsed in 2020, and are now putting them up for sale with a reported price of $2 billion. Warner Brothers are reportedly extremely unhappy about this and are in negotiations with the Saul Zaentz Company. If there is not a satisfactory resolution, legal action may follow.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will hit theatres on 12 April, 2024.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER unveils its first trailer

The first trailer for Amazon Prime TV's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has dropped during the American Super Bowl.

The new series is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth. It tells a multi-stranded story, including the adventures of familiar faces like Galadriel and Elrond in (relatively) younger days, completely new characters and characters from Tolkien's books like Celebrimbor, the forger of (most of) the Rings of Power, the proud elven king Gil-galad and, of course, Sauron.

The trailer suggests a strong visual connection with the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, with similar designs for the island empire of Númenor (from which the kingdom of Gondor was founded) and the elves.

The trailer opens with someone asking, "Haven't you ever wondered what else is out there? There's wonders in this world beyond our wandering." The speaker is Markella Kavenagh's character, a Harfoot named Elanor "Nori" Brandyfoot. The Harfoots are a tribe of primitive, nomadic Hobbits who have wandered into the west of Middle-earth, thousands of years before their descendants eventually settle the Shire.

The first image we see is of a grand harbour, almost certainly that of a port city on the island of Númenor (the statue in the harbour appears to be that of Númenor's founder, King Elros Tar-Minyatur, the brother of Elrond). Númenor is the ancient island superpower from which is descended the line of the kings of Gondor. The camera then passes over hilly plains similar to those of Rohan (and, indeed, may be the same plains for all we know). We briefly see two hunters on the plains as the terrain gives way to wooded ravines. The camera then cuts to an immense waterfall plummeting over a frozen landscape in the Forodwaith, in the far north of Middle-earth. Several figures are trying to climb an icy cliff face, one of whom appears to be a younger Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). We then see a raft being battered in the stormy seas, with a single man on board, Halbrand (Charlie Vickers).

We see an exchange of arrows in a forest at night, with the elven warrior Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) plucking enemy arrows out of the air and firing them back at their source (the sort of move we can imagine Legolas approving of). We see a flaming meteor in the skies whilst the elven high king Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) watches on. We then see Galadriel galloping on horseback across green fields next to spectacular mountains. We see a cloaked figure fighting off a horrendous monster of unknown origin. We see numerous elves gathered around a tree next to a waterfall above a lake, probably in Lindon. The trailer then cuts to brief images of Prince Durin of Khazad-dûm (Owain Arthur), Lord Elrond (Robert Aramayo), the dwarven Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) singing a dwarven song designed to sense riches below the ground, Galadriel on the same raft from earlier having her elvish ears exposed, what appears to be Elanor helping a man known only as "The Stranger" (Daniel Weyman) in a burning environment, a dwarf smashing a rock to pieces, a fierce battle between elven warriors led by Finrod Felagund (Will Fletcher) and orcs, a chained Arondir attempting to escape, and a human hand clasping that of a Harfoot, almost certainly "The Stranger" and Elanor.

Title cards read "Before the king, before the Fellowship, before the Ring, a new legend begins this fall."

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on 2 September this year.

First pictures, plot and character details emerge about LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER

Vanity Fair has the inside scoop on Amazon's bank-flattening Tolkien TV series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, revealing new plot and character information about the series along with exclusive images and confirming some of the show's cast.

Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) meet in the elven kingdom of Lindon.

The article confirms that the show is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. The story is set after the defeat of the Dark Lord Morgoth at the end of the War of the Jewels and the destruction of the western lands of Beleriand. The surviving elves have established new kingdoms in the north-west of Middle-earth, most notably the coastal kingdom of Lindon and the inland nation of Eregion. Their human allies from the war have been given a great gift, a new island home in the midst of the Sundering Seas, Númenor. Over the intervening centuries Númenor has become a powerful island nation, sending its ships to explore every corner of the world. Likewise, the dwarves have established new holdings and reestablished contact with old ones, such as the great subterranean empire of Khazad-dûm, lying beneath the Misty Mountains (and whose dusty ruins will one day be explored by the Fellowship of the Ring, when it is known as Moria).

Despite the defeat of Morgoth, evil has not left Middle-earth. Morgoth's lieutenant, Sauron, is missing, presumed destroyed, and some of his fell followers, including orcs and trolls, remain a problem. It is probably not a massive spoiler to reveal that Sauron (not, at this point, a flaming giant eyeball) is not dead and is plotting a comeback involving the forging of some rather familiar hand-ornaments...

The story of the Second Age is not relayed in any novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, but in historical summaries at the end of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and an essay called The Akallabeth, which is published at the end of Tolkien's mythic account of the wars of the First Age, The Silmarillion (1977). Additional essays, such as a detailed lineage of the Kings and Queens of Númenor, an incomplete short story about a Númenorean mariner-king and a character study of the elven leaders Galadriel and Celeborn can all be found in Tolkien's Unfinished Tales (1980). But these accounts only reveal the grand, over-arcing history of the time period, omitting the close-up details. The writing team, led by Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, has taken advantage of this to create a narrative that both explores the unfolding main narrative but also introduce a host of new characters who will be our eyes and ears into these epic events.

The character list includes some familiar names: Galadriel and Elrond are key and important characters who play a major role in The Lord of the Rings. As the show is set thousands of years before the novels and earlier Peter Jackson film trilogy, these roles have been recast with younger actors. Characters who appeared briefly in the film trilogy, such as the Númenorean king Elendil and his son and heir Isildur (who both briefly appear in the prologue to the first movie), will play a larger role here, and of course Sauron will be the chief (but not sole) threat.

Most of the characters will be new. A young elven warrior named Arondir has found love with a human woman, something this forbidden by his culture. A mysterious human named Halbrand strikes up an alliance with Galadriel after they are both shipwrecked in a storm. Prince Durin, the heir to Khazad-dûm, has to navigate a difficult path.

Showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne have relatively few credits, but were recommended for the job by J.J. Abrams, who'd worked with them on the script for Star Trek Beyond (2016). The two writers also had a take on the Second Age story that excited Amazon. The showrunners quickly assembled an experienced writing team including Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), Jason Cahill (The Sopranos, Fringe) and Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4, Thor: Ragnarok), whilst director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible, A Monster Calls, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) was assigned to produce and direct the first two episodes.

There is one major deviation with this show from the source material. In Tolkien's works, the major events of the Second Age are largely compressed into two time periods, one revolving around the forging of the Rings of Power and the resulting war between Sauron and the elves, during which Numenor makes its presence felt, and another period some fifteen centuries later when the Númenoreans capture and imprison Sauron on their home island, leading to an apocalyptic series of events culminating in the War of the Last Alliance (which opened the original move trilogy). Here the two time periods have been collapsed into one period, presumably lasting a few years or decades.

This isn't completely unprecedented - Jackson collapsed a seventeen-year time gap in the opening chapters of The Lord of the Rings into a few weeks - but the scale here is extreme, with most of the second half of the Second Age being erased. This already seems to be the most contentious change, when the writers could have either instead used a flashback framing device or multiple timelines, or simply done a mid-series time jump. How successful it is remains to be seen.

Confirmed Cast of Characters

• Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), a much younger version of the character played by Cate Blanchett in the original trilogy. Galadriel is younger, prouder and perhaps less measured than in the Third Age. A senior leader of the elves of Middle-earth, she is utterly opposed to the machinations of the Dark Lord Sauron but is tempted by the trappings of power.
• Elrond (Robert Aramayo), a younger version of the character played by Hugo Weaving in the original movie trilogy. Elrond Half-elven has forsaken his human heritage to become a senior leader of the elves of Middle-earth, standing as advisor to the elven High King, Gil-galad.
• Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), one of the highest-ranking elven survivors from the War of the Jewels. Founder and ruler of the inland elven kingdom of Eregion, which borders the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dum. Celebrimbor is a master-smith driven by pride and the desire to forge the most beautiful artifacts ever created. Unfortunately, his pride is something that can be manipulated and used against him.
• Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), a silvan elf warrior who finds a forbidden love with Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), the healer of the village of Tirharad.
• Prince Durin (Owain Arthur), the future King Durin IV, heir to the dwarven throne of Khazad-dûm, which in later ages would be known as Moria. 
• Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) of Khazad-dûm.
• Isildur (Maxim Baldry), a young nobleman of Númenor.
• Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), a human fleeing from his own past.
• A Harfoot Elder (Sir Lenny Henry), a leader of the harfoot people, an early tribe of Hobbits who have come west centuries before the rest of their kin. Megan Richards and Markella Kavenagh play two harfoot youngsters who encounter a "mysterious lost man" whose identity becomes a key mystery in the story (Kavenagh's character may be called Tyra).

Rumoured Cast

• Joseph Mawle and Simon Merrells are playing new (?) characters called Adar and Trevyn. Adar is an antagonist.
• Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker), High King of the Elves in Middle-earth, overlord of Lindon and the senior-most elven leader in Middle-earth.
• Carine (Ema Horvath), Isildur's sister and a young noblewoman of Númenor.
• Elendil (Lloyd Owen), a nobleman of Númenor, father of Isildur and Carine and a kinsman of the king.
• Pharazon (Trystan Gravelle), a royal prince of Númenor.

The first episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is called Shadow of the Past and will debut on 2 September 2022 on Amazon Prime worldwide. The first trailer for the show will air on Sunday during the US Super Bowl.

Saul Zaentz Company to sell its LORD OF THE RINGS screen and merchandising rights

The Saul Zaentz Company is to sell its long-standing screen and merchandising rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's work, which it has held since 1976.

United Artists struck a deal with J.R.R. Tolkien in 1968 to secure the screen rights to Tolkien's novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), along with related merchandising rights. Tolkien had been reluctant to sell the screen rights, but had wanted to secure a legacy for his children and, in particular, to provide for the education of his grandchildren. United Artists worked on several prospective movie projects over the next decade, most notably a live-action collaboration with John Boorman which ultimately did not reach the screen (during research, Boorman developed ideas which led to his 1981 Arthurian movie Excalibur instead).

In 1976 United Artists decided to sell some of its rights to Tolkien's works to raise funds for more original projects. Film producer Saul Zaentz, fresh from the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, acquired the full rights to The Lord of the Rings and the production rights to The Hobbit; United Artists held onto the distribution rights to The Hobbit, figuring that any film adaptation would want to start with the earlier novel (these rights were later acquired by MGM when they bought United Artists). This led Zaentz to produce an animated version of the first half of The Lord of the Rings in 1978 with director Ralph Bakshi; the film was not successful enough to allow a sequel to be produced.

Zaentz established a new company called Tolkien Enterprises to handle the rights he'd acquired; the name was later changed to Middle-earth Enterprises to avoid confusion with the Tolkien Estate. Tolkien Enterprises entered into licencing and merchandising deals for various merchandise related to the property, including video games and a tabletop roleplaying game from Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE). In 1997, Zaentz entered into an agreement with New Line Cinema for a new, live-action film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, to be directed by Peter Jackson. Released as three movies between 2001 and 2003, the the trilogy made $3 billion at the box office and was critically acclaimed.

Zaentz continued to benefit from various licencing deals related to the books and films. Several years later, a complex deal was worked out between New Line, their new owners Warner Brothers and Hobbit rights-holders MGM to produce a film series based on The Hobbit. This trilogy was released between 2012 and 2014 to financial success, but a much more muted critical reception. Zaentz died in January 2014, shortly after the release of the second film in the trilogy.

Zaentz's death and the subsequent reversion of the live-action film rights from New Line to the Zaentz Company in 2020 seems to have spurred the company's decision to sell. The package includes the live-action film rights to The Lord of the Rings in full, the production rights to The Hobbit, spin-off merchandising rights to both properties (including tabletop games, video games, miniatures), theme park rights and rights related to live events based on both novels. The package is expected to raise at least $2 billion before any potential bidding begins.

The logical home for the rights is Amazon. Amazon reached a deal with New Line and Warner Brothers in 2017 as part of their project to bring a Lord of the Rings-branded television series to the air, boosted by an unprecedented $250 million deal with the Tolkien Estate granting them certain limited rights to other Tolkien writings (believed to incorporate strictly-limited rights to Tolkien's posthumous works The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales). Amazon subsequently acquired MGM, meaning they also now own the distribution rights to The Hobbit. Acquiring the Saul Zaentz Company's rights would reunite the full rights to The Hobbit for the first time since 1976, and would also clear the way for Amazon to helm any future remake of the films.

Amazon entered production on its Middle-earth prequel television series, The Rings of Power, in February 2020. The series, which has become the most expensive single television series ever made, is expected to debut its first trailer during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The show is currently scheduled to hit the air on 2 September this year.

It's possible other companies might also be interested in the deal, with Warner Brothers likely keen to investigate following their production (via subsidiary New Line) of the six successful live-action Middle-earth movies to date. Warner Brothers are also currently developing an animated Middle-earth movie, War of the Rohirrim, and that project entered production early enough to not be affected by this reversion of rights. However, the likely high price tag may dissuade Warner Brothers, or encourage them to enter into a partnership with Amazon over future possible projects.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER will drop its first trailer on Sunday

Amazon have confirmed that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will drop its first trailer this coming Sunday, during the Super Bowl. This will be the first footage seen of the series, which began filming in Auckland, New Zealand almost exactly two years ago.

It is likely this will be a relatively brief teaser trailer rather than more in-depth footage. The show will not debut on Amazon until 2 September this year, so this is a continuation of the slow-burn marketing that kicked off in January with the unveiling of the show's title and continued last week with the unveiling of twenty-three posters for the show, each focusing on a different character (whose identity is obscured).

The Rings of Power is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, more than three thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, and will tell a number of different stories from different points in the Age's history. These include the forging of the Rings of Power by the elven-smiths of Eregion, led by Celebrimbor, and the rise to glory and power of the mighty island kingdom of Numenor, the distant ancestors of characters like Aragorn and Denethor. Familiar Lord of the Rings characters like Isildur, Galadriel, Sauron and Elrond are expected to play key roles (albeit with new actors compared to the Peter Jackson movie trilogy), although the bulk of the characters and subplots are expected to be new.

Unlike Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie trilogies, this new work is not based directly on a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. Instead it draws on material about the Second Age and Numenor scattered through Tolkien's writings, including the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, a history in The Silmarillion and several stories, lineages and a map presented in Unfinished Tales. This series marks the first time that material from Tolkien or Middle-earth works other The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have ever been adapted, the result of an unprecedented $250 million deal between Amazon and the Tolkien Estate.

The Rings of Power is comfortably the most expensive ongoing television series ever made, with even the most conservative estimates putting a budget of $30 million per episode on it, twice that of the last two seasons of Game of Thrones. Some estimates suggest that Amazon have spent almost double that figure, which would mean that the show is having more money spent on it per-hour than Jackson's movie trilogy, even adjusted for inflation. Even for Amazon's effectively infinitely deep pockets, this is a huge project and much of the show's future television strategy hinges on it being a major success.

A second season of the show has already been commissioned and is expected to start shooting next month, although production has been moved from New Zealand to the United Kingdom for the second year.

LORD OF THE RINGS prequel TV series finally gets a name: THE RINGS OF POWER

Amazon Prime's extremely expensive Lord of the Rings prequel TV series has a title. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will launch later this year and will cover events in the Second Age of Middle-earth's history, more than 3,000 years before the events of the novels and existing films.

The title is a little unwieldy - the popular fan alternate choices of The Second Age or The Last Alliance are catchier - and somewhat redundant, but at least it's a relief to be able to give the thing a proper name at last.

The Rings of Power is set in the latter part of the Second Age, when the mighty island empire of Numenor became the most powerful nation in the world and even the Dark Lord Sauron, wielding the power of the One Ring, was unable to match it. It sounds like the show may feature significant flashbacks to earlier in the Age, when the elven-smith Celebrimbor was tricked by Sauron into forging the Rings of Power, by which means Sauron gained influence over the races of men and dwarves before forging the One Ring himself.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will launch worldwide on Amazon on 2 September 2022.