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.

RIP Alan Grant

Scottish comic writer Alan Grant, best-known for his work on 2000AD and Batman, has passed away at the age of 73.

Grant was born in Bristol in 1949 but moved to Scotland at the age of one. He was raised in Midlothian. He began working for DC Thomson, a comics company based in Dundee, where their most famous works were The Dandy, The Beano and Commando. Grant was just 18 when he started working for the company and quickly became an editor at the age of 21. He moved to London to work for IPC on romance magazines, went to college and then returned to Scotland where he met up with John Wagner,a fellow DC Thomson write rand editor. Wagner convinced Grant to work with him on a SF comic he was helping put together for IPC, called 2000AD. The Wagner/Grant partnership began by writing the comic's Tarzan strip but quickly expanded to working on Starlord, short-lived 2000AD spinoff comic.

Grant moved into editorial but didn't like working with the commercial side of the company, so returned to being a freelance writer. He and Wagner began collaborating on Wagner's signature comic strip, Judge Dredd, by far the biggest and most important character to break out of 2000AD, eventually generating his own monthly magazine. Grant also worked with Wagner on Strontium Dog.

Grant and Wagner started working for DC Comics in the late 1980s, starting with Outcasts and then moving onto Batman. The two introduced the Ventriloquist in their first Batman story, who soon became a regular recurring Bat-foe. Wagner found he preferred working on his 2000AD material and left Grant to carry on solo, although they re-teamed for various special stories. In particular, their specialist skills in writing Batman and Judge Dredd led to the two characters teaming up in various mini-series, such as Judgement on Gotham, co-written by the two writers.

In the 1990s Grant worked on projects such as Lobo, LEGION and The Demon, but kept his hand on Batman. In 1992 he wrote a new Batman comic book called Batman: Shadow of the Bat, which introduced Jeremiah Arkham, Zsasz and Amygdala, all of whom became long-running members of the Batman mythos. Grant was also one of several writers on the Knightfall event series, credited with boosting the popularity of the character in the mid-1990s.

Grant continued to work prolifically, dividing his time between big companies like DC and Marvel, ongoing work for the 2000AD stable of titles, and even fanzines, as well as his own press. His output and creativity remained undimmed, most recently writing a comic book to celebrate how people in his home village coped with the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A prolific and influential writer who worked on some of the most iconic comics, characters and storylines of all time, he will be missed.

HBO releases full trailer for HOUSE OF THE DRAGON

HBO has unveiled its first full trailer for House of the Dragon.

Soundtracked by a cool cover version of "Venus in Furs" by the Velvet Underground, the trailer opens with King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) expanding on a dream he's had.

Viserys: "The dream was clearer than a memory, and I heard the sound of thundering hooves, splintering shields and ringing swords. And I placed upon the Iron Throne, and all the dragons roared as one."

We cut to an image of a dragonrider flying high over the city of King's Landing, with the great Dragonpit (the home of House Targaryen's dragons in this time period) in the background.

Over scenes of everyday life in King's Landing and the meeting of the small council, we hear conversation between Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), the Hand of the King, and the other King's advisors, including Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes), master of laws, and Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), master of ships.

Otto Hightower: "I consider the matter urgent, that of your succession"

Lyonel Strong: "Who else would have a claim?"

Otto Hightower: "The firstborn child."

Lyonel Strong: "Rhaenyra? No queen has ever sat the Iron Throne."

Corlys Velaryon: "The king has an heir: Daemon Targaryen."

Viserys: "I will not be made to choose between my brother and my daughter."

We see Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) competing in a joust and Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) walking along a beach with Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate). We then see Prince Daemon accepting the salute of the City Watch of King's Landing, followed by Rhaenyra and Ser Harrold Westerling, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard (Graham McTavish), greeting Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), another member of the order.

We then see Princess Rhaenys Velaryon (Eve Best), the wife of Lord Corlys, consulting with her husband.

Rhaenys: "Rhaenyra's succession will be challenged. Knives will come out."

Daemon Targaryen approaches his brother on the Iron Throne but is stopped by the Kingsguard at swordpoint. This is followed by Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey) talking with King Viserys about his duty.

Alicent: "You are the king. Your duty is to take a new wife."

Viserys and Daemon then meet. Daemon is clearly unhappy.

Viserys: "I have decided to name a new heir."

Daemon: "I am your heir."

The various factions then meet on the island of Dragonstone, where a furious Daemon draws his sword on the King's Hand.

Laenor Velaryon: "War is afoot."

Rhaenyra then asks Ser Criston Cole a hard question and gets even harder answers from Rhaenys.

Rhaenyra: "Do you think the realm will ever accept me as their queen?"

Rhaenys: "A woman would not inherit the Iron Throne, because that is the order of things."

Rhenyra: "When I am queen I will create a new order."

The story then shifts forwards in time some years, when both Rhaenyra and Alicent are older (now played by Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke) and events have moved on.

Reggio Haratis: "Your family has dragons."

Viserys: "They're a power man should never have trifled with."

No idea on who Reggio Haratis is, but he sounds like an Essosi. More scenes of battle and the aftermath of battle, possibly the war against pirates in the Stepstones where Corlys and Daemon distinguished themselves. We also see Daemon with his dragon, Caraxes the Blood Wyrm. 

Alicent: "If Rhaenyra comes into power, she can cut off any challenge to her succession."

Rhaenyra: "If I am to inherit the Iron Throne, she will block my way."

Both Alicent and Rhaenyra now have children, so the stakes for the succession of the Iron Throne have grown stronger. Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), Alicent's second son, is seen in (mock?) combat with Ser Criston Cole.

Otto: "Our hearts remain as one."

Alicent: "Our hearts were never one."

We see a shift from the young Alicent and Rhaenyra as close childhood friends to adults separated by power and ambition, as well as more scenes of battles in the Stepstones, with Lord Corlys in the thick of the action.

Rhaenys (to Alicent): "Have you never imagined yourself on the Iron Throne?"

We see more dragons flying over Dragonstone, people in King's Landing, the Velaryons arriving in the throne room, more scenes of the aftermath of battle, dragons roasting people alive and Alicent threatening Rhaenyra with a dagger.

Alicent: "Where is duty? Where is sacrifice?"

Rhaenyra: "Now they see you as you are."

The trailer closes with a shot of a single dragon.

In a new article at The Hollywood Reporter today, HBO also confirms that the time-jump in Season 1 will take place roughly halfway through its first ten-episode season, and they are currently envisaging a 3-4 season run for the show with the possibility of moving to a new time period once the Dance of Dragons has been covered.

House of the Dragon launches on 21 August on HBO.

HBO dishes the dirt on GAME OF THRONES spin-off ideas

In a wide-ranging article at The Hollywood Reporter, insiders at HBO have spoken for the first time about the various attempts to bring a Game of Thrones spin-off to the table.

HBO reached a deal with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss in 2016 to end the show after eight seasons. Almost immediately HBO began exploring ideas for a spin-off, with an eagerness that surprised industry watchers.

HBO had never made a spin-off show to any of their series before. The closest they had come was around 2005 when a spin-off from The Wire, provisionally called The Hall and revolving around the character of Tommy Carcetti as he became Mayor of Baltimore, had gotten quite far into development before it was canned, and the resulting work was folded into the political storyline in Seasons 4 and 5 of the main show. A few years later HBO bought the rights to remake the BBC TV series I, Claudius and investigated turning it into a spin-off/sequel to its underrated historical drama, Rome, even using the same sets (which were, and still are, standing in a film studio outside Rome) and a similar format. HBO eventually broke their rule by producing two movie extensions to two of their most acclaimed series, Deadwood: The Movie (2019) and The Sopranos: The Many Saints of Newark (2021), but only after the Game of Thrones spin-off train had started moving.

George R.R. Martin himself came up with two ideas: The Tales of Dunk & Egg, based on his novellas about Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Egg, as they wandered the Seven Kingdoms about ninety years before the events of the main series. The novellas mix large-scale politics with much smaller-scale, "slice of life" adventure stories. Martin felt the juxtaposition with the vast scale and epic events of Game of Thrones was interesting. HBO agreed, but also felt that maybe adapting those novellas was aiming too small. Martin's other proposal was for a series called The Dance of the Dragons, about a civil war between two branches of the Targaryens when both sides were equipped with dragons. HBO liked that idea better, but felt conversely it was too similar to Game of Thrones itself. HBO, awkwardly, wanted something that captured the epic scale and politics of the original but was not so obviously related to it.

A number of other ideas were discussed, some of them pretty frivolous. One idea about a team of early heroes, including a warrior, a smith, a crone etc, who become the inspiration for the gods of the Seven Kingdoms was shot down pretty quickly. Other proposals were made, including (according to other rumours) for potential sequels to the main series revolving around popular characters, but Martin seemed largely unenthused by any ideas about sequels and these ideas were also limited by actor availability: many of the actors from Thrones, despite loving it, were only too happy to leave the brutal filming schedule behind to pursue other projects.

HBO eventually narrowed things down to five ideas: The Dance of the Dragons, with Carly Wray attached to write; a show about the Doom of Valyria with the alleged title Empire of Ash from Max Borenstein; a show about the warrior-queen Nymeria from Brian Helgeland; a show about the Long Night from Jane Goldman; and a series about Aegon the Conqueror from Rand Ravich and Far Shariat which would have revealed Aegon as a drunken lout (!).

During this development process Carly Wray decided not to pursue the Dance project, apparently feeling she wanted the series to start with the war kicking off whilst Martin wanted a slow-burn opening much like Thrones, with at least a full season preceding the start of the conflict. Bryan Cogman, who had penned some of Thrones' best-received episodes, was brought in to develop the idea further. However, HBO eventually put all of these other projects on hold to pursue the one that stood out to them: the Long Night project.

The show never had a final title, although The Longest Night was Martin's preferred one. Set five thousand years before the main series, the show would have expanded on the creation of the White Walkers and the advent of the Long Night, a generation-lasting winter in which Westeros was almost destroyed by hordes of undead invading from the far north. During this time Westeros is a patchwork quilt of primitive, Bronze Age-esque kingdoms, some so small you could ride across them in a day, and ill-prepared to withstand such an invasion. The show would have had to create human drama out of characters and ideas from the novels which are larger-than-life legends, like Lann the Clever and Bran the Builder.

HBO gave a pilot order and spent a reported $30-35 million on building sets and hiring a cast led by Naomi Watts and John Simm. The pilot episode, entitled Bloodmoon, was shot but HBO started having second thoughts. There'd been a change in leadership at the company and The Longest Night was seen as a gamble, being very different in tone and atmosphere to Thrones. There were also no dragons, and the epic scale may have been somewhat lost with smaller kingdoms and more primitive castles and towns. The Children of the Forest would also be major, ongoing characters, but they had made relatively little impact on the original show. Martin himself also seemed unsure about the project, as he had relatively little background material or notes about this period of Westerosi history, and was not able to readily or quickly answer lore questions from the writers.

More significant, although nobody at HBO has ever said this, is that the final season of Game of Thrones aired around this time and attracted controversial opinions about its ending. Although many aspects of the final season were criticised, the way the White Walkers were very quickly defeated in a single episode was particularly savaged by both fans and critics. Suddenly basing an entire series around the rise of the White Walkers and in which they were primary antagonists didn't seem like a great idea any more.

The Longest Night was cancelled, apparently a huge shock to the creative team who'd felt so confident about the project that they'd been already re-editing the pilot based on feedback and had started breaking the first season.

Almost immediately after this decision was made, HBO decided to go back to basics. They tapped Martin again and agreed that the Dance of Dragons project seemed like a better idea. Martin had already expanded his history of the Dance as part of an entire book about the Targaryens, Fire and Blood, which meant the production team would have hundreds of pages of source material to drawn upon. The dragons and the civil war in Westeros parts of Game of Thrones had been well-received, so doubling down on those elements seemed obvious. HBO and Martin were also able to quickly assemble a creative team who had their full confidence (Bryan Cogman having moved onto a deal at Amazon, acting as a creative consultant on their Lord of the Rings show before developing an original project). Ryan Condal, a friend of Martin's for around a decade and a proven showrunner from Colony (as well as getting a good rep for a Conan the Barbarian proposal he'd been shopping at Amazon), was tapped to develop the project whilst Game of Thrones super-director Miguel Sapochnik was also hired to work on the show (getting Sapochnik again was seen as a coup, as his work on Thrones had made him a hot property and he'd been somewhat reluctant to return).

Since House of the Dragon entered pre-production, HBO has gotten back into the Westeros business in a big way. They are now developing multiple new spin-off projects, including:

• A fresh take on The Tales of Dunk and Egg from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty writer Steven Conrad.
• A show about Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, with the working title The Nine Voyages of the Sea Snake. A major character in House of the Dragon (played by Steven Toussaint), this show would depict him as a young man when he embarked on nine "great voyages" to remote corners of the world, including Qarth, fabled Asshai and the Thousand Islands. Rome writer-producer Bruno Heller is still developing this idea.
•  A show called The Ten Thousand Ships, revolving around Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar, a princess of the Rhoyner who leads her people to safety when her country is destroyed the Valyrians. Their fleet of ships flees across the Summer Sea in search of safety, addressing issues of food, water and internal politics whilst searching for a new home. Think of a fantasy version of Battlestar Galactica. Person of Interest writer Amanda Segel is currently developing this project.
• An animated show set in the Golden Empire of Yi Ti.
• A sequel to Game of Thrones revolving around the character of Jon Snow. Actor Kit Harington himself proposed the idea to HBO and Martin, getting them intrigued enough to put the project into development under the very working title Snow.

In addition to these, HBO also mulled over an idea called Flea Bottom, a peasant's eye view of great events from the poor quarter of King's Landing, possibly an expansion of an idea Martin himself mentioned several times called Spear Carriers, which would have adopted an alternative Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-style perspective of major events from minor POV characters. These ideas are currently on hold.

A lot is riding on the success of House of the Dragon, but it has assembled a top cast and crew and the project has Martin's approval. HBO may also be buoyed that despite repeated attempts by rivals, no true successor to Game of Thrones has emerged (Netflix's The Witcher may have come closest) in popular media. And it will be interesting to see if any of the other spin-off ideas make it to the screen.

RIP Eric Flint

The news has sadly broken that prolific science fiction author and editor Eric Flint has passed away at the age of 75.

Flint was born in Burbank, California in 1947 and spent most of his early life doing odd jobs whilst also serving as a labour union organiser and a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He started writing fiction at a relatively older age and moved into publishing after winning the 1993 Writers of the Future contest. He published his first novel, Mother of Demons, in 1997 and became a full-time writer in 1999.

Flint was best-known for his 1632 series, published by Baen Books. The first novel, 1632, sees the contemporary town of Grantville, West Virginia transported to Thuringia, Central Germany, in the year 1632, with resulting alterations to the timeline. The story continues through six mainline sequels, but is expanded upon through dozens of additional novels, novellas and short stories written by other authors, either solo or in collaboration with Flint.

Flint wrote or co-wrote dozens more novels outside of this setting and sometimes wrote in other settings, such as David Weber's Honor Harrington series. He was also acclaimed for his work as an editor, bringing back numerous classic SF novelists into print, sometimes for the first time in decades.

Eric Flint was also instrumental in the development of e-publishing, with Baen Books developing a system of providing unencrypted e-books to readers many years before the rest of the industry caught on. Flint and the publisher developed the idea of treating readers fairly and with respect to encourage them to financially support their favourite authors rather than pirating them.

Although Flint was successful, he was beset by health problems which drained his finances in later years. His family has set up a GoFundMe to help pay for his memorial service and other costs.

JV Jones closing in on the end of ENDLORDS

Fantasy author J.V. Jones has provided a significant update on her novel Endlords, the fifth and penultimate book in her superb Sword of Shadows series.

The four extant novels in the series are: A Cavern of Black Ice (1999), A Fortress of Grey Ice (2002), A Sword from Red Ice (2007) and Watcher of the Dead (2010). The series is a loose sequel to her earlier work, The Book of Words trilogy, consisting of The Baker's Boy (1995), A Man Betrayed (1996) and Master and Fool (1997).

Since the publication of Watcher of the Dead, Jones has dealt with real life issues and problems that cut into her writing time. She began work on the novel again in 2017 and now reports that she is around six months away from finishing the book. The novel will probably be published some time in 2024, depending on the situation with her publishers.

In the meantime, Jones is already considering plans for the last book in the series, which now boasts the working title A Sword Named Loss.

The Book of Words was a solid opening trilogy, but The Sword of Shadows is one of the A-tier of epic fantasies of recent decades, comfortably sitting on a par with Robin Hobb's Ream of the Elderlings series, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen (Jones provided a cover quote for Erikson's first fantasy novel in 1999 that was credited with helping boost sales). Getting another two books in the series will be very welcome indeed.

DUNE: PART TWO starts production

Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures have confirmed that production is now underway on Dune: Part Two. The continuation of Dune: Part One will shoot for the next few months and is scheduled to hit cinemas on 17 November 2023.

Denis Villeneuve is back to direct from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jon Spaihts. The film will see Timothée Chalamet (Paul Atreides), Zendaya (Chani), Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica), Javier Bardem (Stilgar), Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck), Stellan Skårsgard (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), Dave Bautista (the Beast Rabban), Charlotte Rampling (Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam) and Stephen McKinley Henderson (Thufir Hawat) return to reprise their roles from the first film. They will be joined by new arrivals Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Christopher Walken as Emperor Shaddam IV, Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring and Souheila Yacoub as Shishakli. More castmembers are expected to be announced.

Dune: Part One was released on 22 October 2021 and was a moderate box office success, scoring over $400 million worldwide and an undisclosed further amount in home streaming. The film was seen as a success given the difficult environment of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was critically acclaimed, gaining ten Academy Award nominations and winning six.

Both films adapt Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 science fiction novel Dune. David Lynch previously directed a 1984 movie which had a mixed response, mainly due to the need to compress the entire novel into a single film. SyFy released a mini series based on the novel in 2000, along with a sequel mini-series based on the second and third books in the series in 2003.

Villeneuve has expressed interest in directing a film based on Dune Messiah, the second novel of six in the series. He is also attached to an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's classic SF novel, Rendezvous with Rama, which is expected to be his next project after Dune: Part Two.

First shots of the FALLOUT TV series emerge

Eager-eyed Fallout fans have spotted outdoors sets for the show under construction for the Amazon TV series in Staten Island, New York.

Via Reddit.

This image shows a Super-Duper Mart. In the backstory to the games, Super-Duper Mart was a chain of grocery stores and supermarkets that stretched across the United States. They had outlets in Washington, DC; Lexington, Massachusetts; Nevada; and Watoga and Morgantown, West Virginia. At the time of the Great War, which informs the background to the setting, the chain was transitioning to being 100% automated. You can visit Super-Duper Marts in Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, and billboards for them are present in Fallout: New Vegas.

In reality, the building is a former ShopRite, a supermarket chain operating along the Eastern Seaboard.

The Fallout TV series stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Xelia Mendes-Jones and Aaron Moten in undisclosed roles, with more cast to be announced. Its filming locations are New Jersey, New York and Utah, possibly hinting that the story will span more than one location. The location and story for the show is unknown, with the Fallout series noted as having lots of characters and changing location in almost every instalment, granting the show a lot of leeway to be creative.

The Fallout video game series launched in 1997 with the original Fallout and was followed by Fallout 2 (1998), Fallout Tactics (2001), Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Fallout Shelter (2015), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018), along with numerous expansions. Bethesda Game Studios have confirmed that Fallout 5 is very early in the planning stages, although they have two other games (Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI) to ship first. The games have cumulatively sold around 50 million copies to date. The games are set 250 years in the future, two centuries after a war between the global superpowers devastated the planet, and portray societies and cultures rebuilding. Each game is notable for having a different protagonist and setting, with the games so far being set in and around Los Angeles, Reno, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Pittsburgh, Appalachia, Bar Harbor and Washington, DC, among others.

The Fallout TV show is expected to debut in 2023.

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.

SF model company Eaglemoss enters administration

British company Eaglemoss has entered administration, in a surprise move today that caught fans off-guard and left subscribers to the company's products wondering about their undelivered purchases.

My own Eaglemoss collection: the OG Galactica, Colonial One, the battlestar Pegasus, the USS Voyager, the USS Excelsior and an OG Cylon basestar

For the last decade Eaglemoss has been producing reasonably-priced, reasonable-quality spacecraft models from the Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Expanse, Aliens and Predator franchises, along with figurines and statues from franchises including Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, James Bond, The Walking Dead, Ghostbusters and the DC Universe, with a strong focus on Batman material. Particularly notable was their exhaustive approach to the franchises, creating models of vehicles and characters that have never been made before.

Eaglemoss had also branched into publishing, reprinting numerous classic Star Trek comics and a series of companion books to their model line, often bringing attention and focus to the original model-makers or CG artists.

Eaglemoss were founded in the 1970s and became a leading company in the "partwork" business, where a magazine and part of a model are released each month and, over the course of many months, the buyer ends up with the final model. The idea was popular because it meant people could effectively defer the cost of a model over months or even years rather than having to pay all in one lump sum. However, the model was criticised because often the total cost of the model far exceeded purchasing it in one go. Despite this, the model proved popular into the 1990s.

Eaglemoss pivoted to focusing on prebuilt lines of models in the early 2010s, mainly through their Hero Collector line of Star Trek ships. The line proved very popular, with surprisingly large numbers of people signing up to a subscription model where they received every new ship, ever month. The line extended to an XL line of super-sized ships. The line was hugely successful and saw Eaglemoss diversifying into other franchises. Their line of Doctor Who models and figures was also successful. However, the performance of other lines seemed dubious: their Battlestar Galactica line seemed to fizzle out after the most obvious, iconic ships had been produced and their latest line, based on The Expanse, seemed to have done poorly (some odd ship choices may not have helped, such as picking the obscure UN-One ship before the much more iconic Donnager). They had also faced rejections in trying to acquire rights to other franchises: another company picked up the licence for a similar range of Star Wars ships, whilst Warner Brothers rebuffed the company's efforts to acquire the Babylon 5 licence.

Eaglemoss seemed to be doing very well but, like so many other businesses, they were badly impacted by the COVID pandemic and resulting bottleneck in production and transport from China. They also faced sharply rising costs.

Administration is a system where companies, instead of immediately declaring bankruptcy, are able to go through a restructuring process to try to salvage the company as a going concern, overseen by financial experts and advisors. Although entering administration is never a good thing, many companies have returned to profitability and stability following the process. However, Eaglemoss have been forced to let people go, with their Doctor Who range head confirming via Twitter that had had been made redundant.

During administration a company can sell through existing product, but will usually not be able to acquire more. This has led to fan concerns over the company's few remaining partwork magazines. A Ghostbusters collection to build the ECTO-1 vehicle was only a few parts from conclusion, whilst a Star Trek collection to build the Next Generation version of the USS Enterprise wasn't even halfway done. Customers are trying to get refunds or face being left out of pocket and with incomplete models.