SDCC is back! TheOneRing.net celebrates the past, present & future of LOTR with a look back at the Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a look forward to the upcoming The Rings of Power from Prime Video. Here are all the panels, booths and events for Middle-earth fans going to SDCC 2022:
TheOneRing.net official Booth #1220
Panel 1 – TORn Updates on everything LOTR, Thursday 10:30am Room 6BCF
Hall H The Rings of Power, Friday 10:30am
TORn and Prime Video’s Middle-earth Moot, Friday 5pm
Panel 2 – Second Age Lore, Sunday 1:30pm Room 6A
Exclusive LOTR merch all weekend
All SDCC badges are branded RINGS OF POWER. pic from SDCCblog.com
The Rings of Power off-site experience? – no confirmation of a LOTR experience, but there are persistent rumors. Be on the lookout for more news!
Meet Jed Brophy all weekend at TheOneRing.net booth 1220!
Excited to have the multi-talented actor in LOTR & Hobbit, direct from New Zealand for signings and greetings.
Thursday
10:30am, Room 6BCF – Huge all-encompassing LORD OF THE RINGS panel will cover the 20th Anniversary Celebrations of the New Line films, their upcoming “The War of the Rohirrim,” Amazon Prime’s “The Rings of Power” TV show, new video games focused on Gollum & Dwarves, and new books from the Tolkien Estate. There are some very special exclusive things in store that attendees will not want to miss. Add this panel to your SDCC Official App schedule here.
That Same Afternoon – You’ll want to queue up for Hall H wristbands on Thursday to ensure entry to the next morning’s THE RINGS OF POWER panel. Here’s a good post at SDCC Blog on how Hall H wristbands work.
Friday
10:30am – 12noon, room Hall H – Prime Video presents THE RINGS OF POWER and the very first look at the billion-dollar TV series. Nearly 20 people are confirmed for the panel, including the secretive show runners, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. A new exclusive trailer is nearly guaranteed, but would they dare show the FIRST full episode to fans, as The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance did a few years ago?
5pm – 8:30pm – Party Time! TheOneRing.net and Prime Video invite you to our Middle-earth Moot! This extraordinary party includes Cosplay contest with exclusive giveaways, themed decorations from The Rings of Power, with drinks and food provided. Exclusive TROP swag and other surprises are in store. Open to the public, no SDCC badge required, all ages, Cosplay encouraged (get creative!), space strictly limited! Details & sign up for your free ticket SOON.
Saturday
TheOneRing.net official Booth #1220 – Trivia time EVERY HOUR! Courtesy of Warner Home Video, we have copies to give away of the epic 31-disc 4K box set Middle-earth Ultimate Edition, as well as amazing LOTR fabrics from OSCHA. Pick up a Con-exclusive shirt or just come and chat about what we all saw in Hall H.
Sunday
1:30pm, room 6A – Join an all-star panel of Tolkien scholars and experts for a deep dive into the lore of LOTR and the Second Age. What did Tolkien actually write? What are the threads that Amazon can pull on? Learn the true intent of Tolkien’s lore expansion, and be informed enough to win all the internet debates coming soon. Be sure to add this panel to your SDCC Official App schedule here.
SDCC Exclusive Merch
We are excited to have incredible new T-shirts and pins available only at TheOneRing.net Booth #1220, not online, from some of our favorite artists!
Peabody Award-winning artist, author and director Molly Ostertag (@HobbitGay) designed BAG END SOCIAL CLUB which incorporates a direct quotation from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.
We also have more fun items including books from “Middle-earth: Script to Screen” co-author Kellie Rice, art from Eisner-nominated (2022) comic artist team Kempo Cornelius & Chris Northrop, and items from The Nerd of the Rings and Discord. Come by the booth #1220 to discover it all!
Get all your officially-licensed LOTR merch at Booth #1220 including Shire Post coins & wax seals & more!
Remember, TORN is not-for-profit and we are just trying to pay off the very expensive booth!
Other panels of interest to LOTR fans
Andy Serkis new comic panel, Thursday 5pm Room 32AB (he might be zooming in)
Billy & Dom’s Moriarty podcast panel, Thursday 12:15pm Room Indigo (in person, covid allowing)
Prime Video offsite – across the rail tracks from Hall A, Prime Video usually has a big free outdoor event space.
Dungeons & Dragons Tavern – corner of Sixth Avenue and Island Avenue
The Rings of Power press events – for those fans covering SDCC as Press, Prime Video is running a tight ship and things are invite-only for their press days. TheOneRing.net Middle-earth Moot party on Friday is a private fan event: there shall be no Press access or video cameras allowed! You shall not pass!
Win the Ultimate Collection at TheOneRing.net booth 1202
Our pals at WBHE are hooking you up with the ultimate 4K Boxed set of the COMPLETE Peter Jackson Middle-earth films: both LOTR and The Hobbit (technically two trilogies so does that make this a Hexology?!) There are multiple opportunities to win one through our trivia challenges all weekend long at Booth #1220.
Follow TheOneRing.net on our official Twitter & Instagram to keep up with all the Comic-Con excitement, and join our official partnered Discord to catch ALL the things as they break.
Our friends over at Sideshow don’t only produce incredible collectibles – they also make some very entertaining videos! One of their shows is a sixth scale figure posing contest, ‘Strike a Pose’.
Often featuring celebrity guests, the show is hosted by ‘Pose Master General’ Terry Smith. Three contestants have a short period of time in which to pose a figure (shipped to them by Sideshow – the show is filmed remotely in these Covid-concious times, which opens it up for participation from people all over the world). Smith then judges the poses; and the best one wins kudos and glory! It’s really all about the banter and fun – check out an episode from a couple of years ago, when actor David Dastmalchian relived one of his earliest movie appearances, in The Dark Knight.
Today Sideshow have let us know about a very exciting episode, coming up later this month, which fans of Middle-earth will not want to miss: Oin, Bombur and Bifur will be taking part! Actors John Callen, Stephen Hunter and William Kircher competed with an entirely suitable figure; here’s a glimpse of the fun in store, in this trailer Sideshow have exclusively shared with TORn:
July 23 is when the episode will air, during San Diego Comic-Con. Our friends at Sideshow will be at the con – if you’re there, be sure to stop by and visit them at Booth #1929. They always have an incredible display; you won’t want to miss it! (After you visit TORN at Booth #1202, of course!) And if you aren’t one of the fortunate folks visiting Comic-Con, why not entertain yourself by watching past episodes of ‘Strike a Pose’? And then catch up with our dwarven friends, and see how they got on when grappling with Gandalf the Grey!
November, 1977: In the United States, the National Broadcasting Company (or NBC – you know, with the Peacock) airs the first ever made-for-television Tolkien story, The Hobbit, by Rankin-Bass. I was just barely ten years old! Cost: $3M US.
Copyright 2001 Warner Brothers Entertainment
September, 2022: Throughout the world, Amazon Prime (you know, with the… thing) is programmed to broadcast the first two episodes of the Rings of Power, the first ever made-for-television live action Tolkien story spun from a literary foundation of The Lord of the Rings Appendices, promising a five season series with a total of 50 hours of showtime. Cost: $8B US.
45 years and $7,977,000,000 later, where are we now? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and I mean, besides me getting old.
SUPER EXCITED! And tantalizingly close, compared to 2017, when the show was announced.
Source: Amazon Prime
Quenching our Thirst
Now, after a parching, dehydrated, drought of a post-teaser-trailer-season, the marketing associated with RoP has finally begun to quench the thirst of fans throughout the world. As frustrating as it has been for many, it has been equally impressive: Amazon’s work for inhibiting unauthorized release of media, information, even rumor and urban legend regarding RoP has been impressive. Fans have feverishly picked apart the minutia of every image released in 2022, and one thing is clear: we are here for it!
This marketing strategy is very different than what we have experienced – and frankly, appreciated and been accustomed to – in the past. Many worry the approach has been a failure: 60 days from showtime, and no actual video footage has been shared with the public! Yet, I can’t help but imagine a war room of marketing wizards at work, meeting out exactly what is needed, and when, carefully calibrated to strike just the right measure of hype before the show streams in earnest.
Through the words, experiences, and perspectives of the London 30 who were summoned to England several months ago, the marketing wizards casts their spell. A series of images and articles continue to surface on the webs and in print, shared broadly between traditional media outlets, first web-generation Tolkien fan sites like TORn, and the newest of media formats: Reddit, TickTock, Twitter, YouTube… Influencers abound, and Amazon has them tapped. But will it reach enough consumers to tune in on September 2nd? And what is “enough?” We know more is coming at ComicCon, and eagerly await that and the rest.
One of three Empire Magazine covers
Author’s note: I’m thrilled to return to news posting here at TORn at the turn of this tide, and looking forward to sharing dispatches from ComicCon this month, and Rings of Power and all manner of Tolkien tidbits with you over the coming years. To stay informed with any breaking news (and plenty of rumors and speculation), and participate in the tantalizing build up to the show in real-time, join me and other TORn staffers Demosthenes, Justin, Kelvarhin and others, and the throng of this generation’s Ringers, in our very own Discord server: https://discord.gg/CTf6sGxR.
See you soon! Tookish bows.
Tookish is one of TORn’s first staff members after the Founding Four, serving as Senior Editor, assistant to Xoanon, lowbrow member of the Greenbooks team, Barliman’s chat moderator, and ComicCon panelist during the Peter Jackson LotR film series era.
As we work our way through the 20th anniversary period of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, we can at the same time celebrate the 10th anniversaries of The Hobbit Trilogy. Our friends at Weta Workshop currently have a timed pre-order going for an amazing-looking Smaug statue from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. This timed pre-order runs until July 6th, which is just next week! However many fans order this by that cut off date will set the edition size of this collectible. You can snag Smaug right now for $1,299 (USD), or $187.50 a month on a payment plan – allowing you more easily to acquire this piece. If you decide to do the full payment plan you have time to save, with this stunning Smaug not arriving until quarter one of next year.
The awesome folks at Diamond Select Toys have some cool new The Lord of the Rings collectibles for fans to add to their displays: their D-Formz figures (Series 1). These 2-3 inch tall figures of Aragorn, Gandalf the Grey, Frodo, Gimli, Legolas, Smeagol, and Gollum come individually blind-boxed for $8.99. If you would like, you can order a set of 12 blind boxes – thus at least increasing your chance to get all of the figures – for $107.88. These are in pre-order right now, but are due to ship in October; not too much of a wait to add this cool twist on The Lord of the Rings Trilogy to your collection.
We’re excited to share with you news from the London Philharmonic Orchestra about an upcoming episode of their podcast LPO Offstage featuring Howard Shore.
During the podcast, Howard Shore talks about the recording sessions for the Lord of the Rings films. He is also joined by Principal Percussion, Andrew Barclay and Principal Trumpet, Paul Beniston, who both took part in the recording sessions. They cover a range of topics such as the timeline from Shore’s initial ideas, through drafts to the final version. They discuss the recording process, and Howard making changes overnight. Howard also tells why he decided to work with the LPO for these movies.
The episode is hosted by YolanDa Brown. It will be available for your listening pleasure on July 7th on the London Philharmonic’s website at LPO Offstage.
LPO Offstage is in it’s 4th series and takes you behind-the-scenes of the Orchestra, bringing you closer than ever to the world of classical music. Past episodes have covered things like performance anxiety, the logistics of how a full symphony orchestra goes on tour, and how the music gets from the library to the music stand to name just a few. Tune in to hear from players and special guests to get your access-all-areas pass to the Orchestra.
