Prime Video have just dropped a whole load of character posters, and we are very excited to have…
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Prime Video have just dropped a whole load of character posters, and we are very excited to have the above one to share as an exclusive! You can find the images on Prime’s Instagram, here.
Who could this be? There’s a distinctly Sauron-like feel to this armoured gauntlet… All of the character posters show hands and arms – and suggest different races and peoples of Middle-earth. We’ll bring you a closer look at all the posters later; let the speculation begin! #LOTRonPrime
It began with the forging of the title…
Amazon’s Prime Video is gearing up for the much anticipated Lord of the Rings show, coming this September; and today they have revealed the title for the show. It is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
This, however, is to be no ordinary tv show; the budget and time already invested, and anticipated investment to come, make that clear. So it is only fitting that the title reveal was no ordinary reveal… The title was in fact (as the official press release states) ‘forged from real molten metal running like fiery rivers through hand-carved wooden ravines to craft its silvery letter forms.’ You can watch a dramatic video of this happening, here:
As an indication of the showrunners’ desire to connect with the fanbase, TORn staffers Justin and Quickbeam were fortunate enough to be invited to witness this moment in person; and TORn can now share with you some EXCLUSIVE behind the scenes glimpses of this epic moment, in the images and quotations below.
First, some more from the official press release, which goes with this magical reveal:
Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power officially has a name and it hints at what’s to come.
The television series’ complete title was revealed today, and the significance behind the subtitle will not be lost on J.R.R. Tolkien fans, foreshadowing an epic story that welds the major events of Tolkien’s Second Age together: the forging of the iconic rings.
‘This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics. The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Numenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men,’ said Showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay. ‘Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring – but before there was one, there were many … and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.’
Just as so many elements of the show itself were hand-crafted, Prime Video chose to physically forge the title in a blacksmith foundry, pouring fiery molten metal into hand-carved wooden ravines shaped to the letterforms. … The bespoke title treatment appears crafted in a silvery metal, with lines of Elvish script inscribed along the crest of each letterform.
Of course, this newly revealed title gives fans much to talk about, speculating about both content and tone of the coming series. Let’s just consider here, however, the nature of this reveal. It is extraordinary that the film makers should go to such lengths, pouring (ha, pun intended) their passion for the series into this artisanal moment. A large, highly skilled and experienced team, including director Klaus Obermeyer, special effects adviser Douglas Trumball, and special effects supervisor Lee Nelson, and using advanced 4K camera systems, worked with metal foundryman Landon Ryan, a highly skilled craftsman with 28 years of experience. Ryan says:
“With art, so much of it is about experimentation and materials and using materials in a way that they’re really not designed for and seeing where the limits are. With this [project], it was the freedom to do things that you wouldn’t do in a normal world, because they don’t make sense. But in this sense, it was to achieve a certain look or feeling.”
“It was such a pleasure seeing {Klaus’} vision and then coming up with ways to help him achieve what he was looking for. Experimentation and the willingness to try different things was a lot of fun. I am so thankful that I got to experience metal on that level. Because that’s my world. I pour metal every day and it’s a new understanding.”
Special effects adviser Douglas Trumball is an Academy Award winner, and has worked on classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner, and more. He tells us:
We all had in mind this idea of molten metal brilliantly glowing -so that there’s no question that what you’re looking at is a hot metal. What we settled on was to mix some of these metals to get a certain color and a certain brightness. It was a combination of bronze and aluminum.
Knowing that a legend such as Douglas Trumbull worked on this project, you realise the extent of the care and attention which was given to what is, in the grand scale of the entire project, a relatively small moment. But it’s a crucial one, getting the ball rolling in 2022, the year of the launch of this series. Speaking personally, the level of lavish artistry shown here makes me very optimistic for what lies ahead. The visual and audio tone shown in the title reveal video seem entirely in keeping with what we expect from Middle-earth; and the enduring, metal letters neatly mirror the enduring artistry and legacy of the Professor himself.
With many more exciting reveals coming, we the fans can really allow ourselves to start to get excited. So it begins…
Staff from TheOneRing.net will be presenting panels, in-person, at two separate conventions in Southern California over the next week and a half.
First up is San Diego Comic-con’s Special Edition event this coming weekend. Our panel will be on Friday night, November 26 at 7 pm, and will be in room 7AB. If you have ever wanted to go to SDCC, but have been unable to get tickets, they are still available for this event. It’s a great way to get your feet wet, as it were, and buying a pass to the Special Edition will allow you to be on the Past Attendee list when the 2023 SDCC goes on sale. To check out our listing in the schedule, click here.
Our second stop on this whirlwind tour of SoCal conventions will be the Los Angeles Comiccon the following weekend, on Saturday morning, December 4 at 11 am, and will be in room 410. Both panels will be very similar, unless any new announcements about the Amazon LOTR drop between this weekend and the next. Feel free to visit us at both, but at least this way fans in both LA and San Diego have options to hang with the wonderful Fellowship that makes up Tolkien fandom.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Lenny Henry dishes on his Harfoot role in the billion-dollar TV series.
Today on BBC Radio, as part of a wide ranging interview about his career, he talked briefly about joining Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings” series and might have spilled a bit more than anyone anticipated. Listen to the interview here and skip to 29 minutes for the relevant LOTR part: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0010fk3
TheOneRing.net was first to report on Lenny’s role, with the earliest rumors being someone of short stature (dwarf king? proto-hobbit?) which eventually landed on Harfoots, one of Tolkien’s three “tribes” of early halflings appearing in Middle-earth.
Lenny might have said a bit more than Amazon Studios would have liked, but core fans can appreciate everything he said in which many of the previous rumors are now validated, including potentially Galadriel’s leading role in the overall series:
“For the last two years I’ve been working on Lord Of The Rings and it’s an extraordinary thing, it’s the biggest television show that’s ever been made, in terms of money and head count. Literally, a hundred people on set glaring at you and trying to work out what you’ll look like four feet tall… I’m a Harfoot, because J.R.R. Tolkien, who was also from Birmingham, suddenly there were black hobbits, I’m a black hobbit, it’s brilliant, and what’s notable about this run of the books, its a prequel to the Age that we’ve seen in the films, its about the early days of the Shire and Tolkien’s environment, so we’re an indigenous population of Harfoots, we’re hobbits but we’re called Harfoots, we’re multi-cultural, we’re a tribe not a race, so we’re black, asian and brown, even Maori types within it. It’s a brand new set of adventures that seed some of the origins of different characters and it’s going to take at least ten years to tell the story. Because it’s based on “The Silmarillion” which was almost like a cheat-sheet for what happens next in this world in the Second and Third Ages. And the writers have a lot of fun in extrapolating it all out, and it’s going to be very exciting. There’s a very strong female presence in this, there’s going to be female heroes in this evocation of the story, there’s going to be little people as usual.”
– Lenny Henry, on BBC Radio
Sir Lenny Henry was one of the biggest casting announcements from Amazon as a respected comedian, author and thespian, creator of Red Nose Day and the Comedy Relief charity programs. Sir Lenny holds a doctorate in media representation and is an absolute icon of both the British stage and the world of comedy.
Bringing it back to J.R.R. Tolkien, Sir Lenny’s casting as a Harfoot aligns with the very brief descriptions of the antecedents of those halflings we met during The War of the Ring. Both Tolkiens (J.R.R. and Christopher) acknowledge that while Men & Elves kept records of history, those records were only related to people they encountered, opening the door to halflings or other folk staying “undiscovered” for centuries.
Quite literally; the Professor mentions in Appendix B: The Tale of Years for the Third Age Year 1050: “The Periannath are first mentioned in records, with the coming of the Harfoots to Eriador.” Which immediately begs the question of how many centuries the Harfoots were not mentioned in records, being overlooked by others who took it upon themselves to bother to record any history. To quote our earlier rumored report of Harfoots:
[described by Tolkien in the Prologue to LOTR ‘Concerning Hobbits’ pg. 12: “they were browner of skin,” and also “they moved westward early,” alluding to a time in their Wandering Days, or perhaps earlier when they kept no records of their journeys over the Misty Mountains westward (which may explain a little of why any early antecedents of pre-Shire migration hobbits would appear here in the Second Age instead of Third Age narrative)]
Middle-earth is lucky to have such a high-caliber performer joining the latest adaptation, and there is strong potential he could become a fan favorite in the show. Sir Lenny exactly the right person to expand our knowledge of halflings and bring to life the long (yet shrouded in mystery) history of Shire-folk.
What seems odd at first sight is the mention of “early days of the Shire” because what we learn from the Appendices in the back of ROTK is that King Argeleb II grants the land (that would later become the Shire) to the Periannath in 1601 of the Third Age. This is many thousands of years *after* the events of the Second Age, and the general area was unpopulated (considered the hunting grounds of the King). So it appears we can expect a greater probability of “time crunching” in the narrrative of this new show.
Maybe we should brace ourselves for all kinds of “time crunching.” Working within Tolkien’s given historical timeline is an important aspect of the terms of the deal with the Tolkien Estate: we shall see how fast and loose the Writer’s Room is going to play with the timeline.
It is also quite noteworthy that Sir Lenny spilled the beans about “The Silmarillion” being a source upon which “some” or even “much” of this streaming series is based. Without any other official statements from Amazon Studios on *exactly* what they have licened from, say, “Unfinished Tales” or “The Sil,” now we have it right out in the open. Confirmation keeps coming from various places that matches all those Instagram postings seen from various cast members last year, all of them showing off their copies of “The Silmarillion.” The two late chapters in that book are specifically centered on Second Age concerns; while most of it is quite obviously from the Age of the Lamps, the Trees, and the First Age. It seems Amazon Studios has, per the terms of their deal with The Tolkien Estate, legally licensed material from Tolkien books that have NEVER been licensed before.
It is indeed an unprecendeted time in Tolkien fandom; filled with surprises and much excitement. Small leaks and wild rumors abound – and they will become either quite real or utterly discarded right before our very eyes as we learn more each week.
Deadline and Fellowship of the Fans (FOTF) are carrying separate reports that Howard Shore is in the frame to compose soundtrack music for the LOTR on Prime series. FOTF reports the deal is, in fact, already inked and, additionally, that Shore will be joined by American composer Bear McCreary.
For those living under a rock (yours truly, for example), McCreary is best known for his work on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, as well as Outlander and The Walking Dead. He also composed the music for the God of War computer game.
The choice of Shore offers more evidence that Amazon Studios is exerting a lot of effort to create a synchronicity between the LOTR on Prime Second Age-focused series and the aesthetics that Peter Jackson established with his own renditions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
Update
In 2019, Shore expressed in an interview with Loot Crate that he’d be open to and interested working in the Middle-earth milieu again.
I spent so many happy years traveling through Tolkien’s world. If I was able to return and explore a bit more in a creative environment, I would be very interested to do so.
Howard Shore, speaking to Loot Crate.
It’s also worth noting that in September 2020 TORn Tuesday revealed a rumour that Shore and Amazon were in discussions. Staffer Justin reported that Shore didn’t “necessarily want to compose the whole series”, but was keen to be involved in the design and development of the themes. This would tend to bear out FOTF’s report of a dual-pronged appointment and the involvement of McCreary. You can watch that TORn Tuesday episode here (Shore discussion starts around 9 mins 50 secs).
Come join the Southern California TORn staff and Tolkien fans on Saturday, September 18, 2021, as we celebrate Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ shared birthday in Griffith Park. The party will kick off at Noon, and run until about 6 pm. The biggest difference this year will be NO POTLUCK. Please bring enough food and drink for yourself and the group you will be attending with. As always, sunscreen, a hat and sunglasses, and maybe a popup for shade are all good things to bring in order to stay comfortable. We are returning to the Mineral Wells section of Griffith Park, which is near the Harding Golf Course. Please head to the Baggins Birthday Bash Facebook event page for directions and a map. https://www.facebook.com/events/193623342558178/
While this event is scheduled for Saturday, September 18, the dual issues of COVID restrictions and/or Wildfires could become an issue this coming week. Should LA County trigger a restriction of large gatherings or a Wildfire trigger evacuations in the region of Griffith Park, we will post a Cancelation notice to the FB page first, and if there is time, post here on the main website as well.
As for COVID restrictions, the LA County guidelines recommend masking outdoors only in the case of a Mega Event, and that has only happened once. We are recommending everyone have a MASK with them, ready to wear near groups of people and remove when eating and drinking. The outdoor setting should afford us more than enough space to social distance if it makes you feel comfortable. We would PREFER if everyone attending was fully vaccinated, but none of us are qualified to verify the CDC card, so we won’t be asking.
