The first trailer for the highly anticipated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has dropped – and it is going to make fans very excited! You’ll want to watch it right away:

Staffers at TheOneRing.net are abuzz over this trailer. We’ll be bringing you our reactions (including some below), but first, let’s look at what the official press release has to say:

New Line Cinema’s original anime feature “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” returns audiences to the epic world brought to life in “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy, based on the revered books by J.R.R. Tolkien. 

Under the direction of award-winning filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama (the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” and “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” TV series), the talented voice cast is led by Brian Cox (“Succession”) as Helm Hammerhand, the mighty King of Rohan; Gaia Wise (“A Walk in the Woods”) as his daughter Héra; and Luke Pasqualino (“Snowpiercer”) as Wulf.  Miranda Otto, who delivered an unforgettable, award-winning performance in “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy, reprises her role as Éowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan, who serves as the tale’s narrator.  The voice ensemble also includes Lorraine Ashbourne (Netflix’s “Bridgerton”), Yazdan Qafouri (“I Came By”), Benjamin Wainwright (“World on Fire”), Laurence Ubong Williams (“Gateway”), Shaun Dooley (“The Witcher”), Michael Wildman (“Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw”), Jude Akuwudike (“Beasts of No Nation”), Bilal Hasna (“Sparks”) and Janine Duvitski (“Benidorm”). 

Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” tells the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan.  A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg—a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep.  Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Héra, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction. 

With Kamiyama at the helm, the original feature is being produced by Oscar winner Philippa Boyens, from the screenwriting team behind “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” Trilogies, alongside Jason DeMarco and Joseph Chou, who, in addition to their many separate animation projects, collaborated on the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” series. The executive producers are Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Sam Register, Carolyn Blackwood and Toby Emmerich.  The screenplay is by Jeffrey Addiss & Will Matthews and Phoebe Gittins & Arty Papageorgiou, story by Addiss & Matthews and Boyens, based on characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien.  The team of creative collaborators returning from “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy also includes Oscar winners Alan Lee and Richard Taylor, along with esteemed Tolkien illustrator John Howe. 

A New Line Cinema Presentation, a Warner Bros. Animation / Sola Entertainment Production, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” will be distributed theatrically worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, released in cinemas nationwide on December 13, 2024, and internationally beginning 11 December 2024.

Staffer greendragon has a few preliminary thoughts:

Actually I’m kind of speechless! WHAT a trailer. Chills and excitement. Cannot wait to visit this version of Middle-earth; PJ’s vision but now through the eyes of Kenji Kamiyama. Thrilling.

0.01 Hello old friend. It’s been so long since we’ve had a trailer with these sounds, with these visuals… I’m kind of ridiculously emotional.

0.04 In case you had any doubt whose version of Middle-earth this is…

0.16 Yes please. I want to go there.

0.23 This is a beautiful shot; and cleverly brings us right into Kamiyama’s visual world. “OK, you love how Peter Jackson brought Tolkien’s realm to life; but check out THIS version of it!”

0.44 Breathtakingly beautiful.

0.55 It is so fun seeing the Golden Hall – familiar but also new.

01.18 Well that’s the exposition covered then…

01.19 Seriously, it is crazy how emotional this makes me. And sure, maybe this trailer overplays that, and rather manipulates us. But I’m ok with that; I have so many happy memories of looking forward to revisiting PJ’s version of Middle-earth in the holiday season. (I wonder if The Hunt for Gollum will also end up with a holiday release date? December 2026, maybe…?)

01.28 Echoes of Theoden; reminds me of ‘What can men do against such reckless hate?’

01.33 Not sure about Héra’s outfit; it looks strangely space-age in this shot. Makes me think of cartoons like ‘Battle of the Planets’. But, it will probably read differently in the context of the film.

01.39 This is a very cool visual. I don’t know enough about anime to know how this effect is achieved, but it reminds me a bit of the blend of styles in Bakshi’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

01.46 The eagles are coming!

01.50 Is this THE Watcher in the Water, or just A Watcher in the Water? If it’s the one, why is Héra in Moria?

01.54 Now that’s interesting – that shot totally reminds me of Galadriel climbing ice in Season 1 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Intentional or just serendipity?

02.14 I love the 3D effect of the title.

02.17 An orc gathering rings as Sauron searches for the One! Will this be our only glimpse of anything to do with the Ring legend…? And also, is that Andy Serkis’ voice I hear?

Wow. So excited for this movie.

Staffer Demosthenes here:

I’ve been wanting to see finished animation for The War of the Rohirrim for yonks. Descriptions out of Annecy and SDCC, while cool in themselves, aren’t especially useful for forming a personal judgement. Stills will only get you so far. You need to see it moving.

Now, with a teaser in hand that combines action and dialogue and sound, it’s the moment of truth. (well, the first of them.)

As someone who does watch a fair bit of anime, it was reassuring: although I wish it was a little more fluid in character animation, it’s still very solid. The character designs look good (quite detailed, too, and that increases the level of work for staff) and move well. The horses feel almost like a triumph – I loved the clods of earth the charge we saw was throwing up; very dynamic — given the difficulty of that task. And the backgrounds don’t jar by looking too real/photorealistic.

Fights feel realistic and don’t indulge in over the top physics — something that is fine for, say, Demon Slayer, but would be, I think, counter to the general tone of Middle-earth. It fits the world that it’s meant to be portraying.

This is crucial: it sounds and looks and feels like Middle-earth.

If there’s one thing I’m not sure about, it’s the Watcher-like creature. I don’t love monsters for the sake of them and it’s a long way from Moria to Rohan. Perhaps there’s a good contextual explanation, though.

I’ve always really liked the Helm story – it might be my favourite one out of the appendices. I can see the bones of that story here: the marriage proposal, the fight, and the consequences that follow for Rohan and its various people.

The trailer teases later events and the Hornburg climax without revealing it fully. If you don’t already know the Helm story, or what happens to Helm and his family, this trailer is a bit of a mystery actually!

I’m keen to see it all unfold on screen.

By-the-by, industry talk is that in the USA, Rohirrim trailer is attached to Beetlejuice. Can’t confirm that, but that’s the rumour.

Warner Bros. also announced today that they will be attending New York ComicCon. We’ll also be hosting a War of the Rohirrim panel at DragonCon next week, complete with an interview with producer Jason DeMarco. News on all these happenings soon!

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We now have our first released art for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Not concept art, but final stills of animation that gives us a concrete idea of the visual style and tone that Kenji Kamiyama and his team have settled on.

And I like it.

It seems to me that it hits an aesthetic that straddles the eastern and western animation.

There’s a naturalistic feel to the character designs that feels very grounded and without exaggeration. Eyes aren’t distractingly wide, chins aren’t overly pointed, limbs and heads all feel well-proportioned. The colours are solid and rich, but not distractingly glossy or saturated.

Perhaps it helps that the expressions say “serious business” (we’ll return to that, too).

Perhaps that says more about my own tastes in anime than anything else.

I’ve also seen a couple of people who were at Annecy reference Castlevania as an animation touchstone. I don’t really see it, but perhaps I need to watch more Castlevania.

So I love the character designs, but now I really want to see how they move.

Before I delve into each of the images in more detail, if you have yet to read Staffer Greendragon’s interview with Philippa Boyen’s, don’t forget!

The War of the Rohirrim animation still: Héra

Okay, so first because I can see the name complainers arriving en-masse already: go read my interview with Philippa Boyens – the name is “not so much based on the Greek [goddess] Hera, but a nod to the Anglo-Saxon [word].”

Héra is ourpoint-of-view character. Makes sense given everyone frigging dies. But what’s going on here? Where is it? Let’s attack that second point first.

Location

It’s a dark scene. Perhaps sometime in the evening? It must be winter (or approaching it) because of the snow. Maybe the lighting is torchlight.

There’s a ramp and a wall which makes me wonder if it could be (what shall be known in the future as) Helm’s Deep. But the rope and the wooden structure on the ramp behind Héra don’t match. PJ’s Hornburg had a gate, but not a drawbridge. PJ’s ramp/causeway was also quite steep and curved.

Ultimately, I think we can dismiss it being before the gate to the Hornburg.

Maybe it’s further out – Helm’s Dike. I think Tolkien described Helm’s Dike as a ditch and a rampart, with a breach in it for the stream and the road to pass through. There’s a map on Tolkien Gateway that shows where it would be located.

If it were Helm’s Dike that might better explain the wooden structures. And the hutlike structure behind Hera might be a guard hut on the roadside. It would actually be quite a neat (read “nerdy”) detail if it were Helm’s Dike.

However, it might also be Edoras.

PJ doesn’t give Edoras a lot of quarried stone — notably the foundation of Meduseld itself, and the base of the outer defensive fence (topped with a wooden palisade).

That makes the stone wall we can see behind a puzzle to explain.

However, from a certain angle at the top of Edoras, but just below the Hall itself, you should be able to see the valley cliffs in the distance. That fits with the transition from the wall edge to the cliff that we in our animated still. Hopefully the images below help convey that. I wasn’t able to find the exact same angle though.

But Edoras has a dirt path with concluding stairs, not a stone ramp. And the hut isn’t there on that angle. Instead, it’s a wooden lookout tower.

Architectural details might change over time though. Especially after a siege/sacking — and, spoiler, Edoras is set to cop it in WOTR. So I don’t know if these are significant objections.

But if it is just below the Golden Hall, why is the horse in the background? The stables are not directly attached to the Hall and there’s no room for additional buildings on the Hall plinth. It’s a puzzle.

It could be lower down in the town somewhere, perhaps. The outermost fence seems difficult though because I think the wall would always obscure any wide panorama that would reveal the valley cliffs.

I can’t find any image that suggests that PJ chose to place an inner wall anywhere in Edoras.

I don’t think it could possibly be either Isengard, or Dunharrow. There are probably no other options within the context of WOTR.

Action

Héra is challenging someone, but it doesn’t seem to be a life-or-death situation: the blonde fellow behind her is watching, but not alarmed. There’s a dog at the top of the ramp, but it doesn’t seem frightened either. The figures to the left do seem wary about whatever is happening, but aren’t moving to attack. The bonemasks that obscure their faces bear some resemblance of the helms of Isengard’s orc berserkers — as though they’re some primitive antecedent.

Orcs would probably be a scene of great violence, though. This seems more like a standoff/negotiation.

So perhaps they are actually Dunlendings. Yes, PJ’s Dunlending are universally bareheaded. But they’re also pretty rough and ready looking, and carry very primitive spears. I see one of our bonemask fellows bearing a similarly primitive spear.

So maybe they are accompanying Wulf/Freca to Meduseld at the beginning of the film. Perhaps the individual whom we cannot see is either Freca or Wulf, pressing an unwelcome suit before the all-important council meeting that kicks everything off?

Weapon

Finally, there’s the sword that Héra wields.

I wonder if it might be Éowyn’s sword, mostly based on the way the blade narrows from hilt to tip. Also, it just seems kinda apt. My learned colleague ( 🙂 ), Staffer Greendragon, thinks it’s Theoden’s sword — Herugrim — because of the hilt shape and the double horse motif. And it’s an heirloom sword. Both options seem possible to me in the absence of a definitive comment from production, or alternate angles to examine.

The War of the Rohirrim animation still: The Gathering in Meduseld

Character design observations

I suspect this one is supposed to give us a feel for character art style, as well as Helm’s family. In some ways this is all a family affair.

• Helm is a little less grim-looking than I expected. He looks quite noble, and is powerfully built. His hands, formed into fists, could probably break Orthanc itself.
• Haleth looks about Eomer’s (Karl Urban) age. Looks very serious.
• Héra actually seems older than Éowyn and maybe the eldest, even. She sits at the right hand of Helm, traditionally a more important position than the left? Right-hand man and all that.
• Hama seems a late teen. Something about his manner suggests that He’s probably the reckless one/has something to prove which explains his death during a “sortie” while Helm’s Deep is besieged.
• Helm’s children are all older than I expected as well – except Hama, perhaps.

Action

It looks as though they are receiving an embassy. Initially I thought it might be that of Freca, but having read some reports on the content of the Annecy footage, I now wonder if it’s the emissary from Gondor that’s been mentioned in some places.

The War of the Rohirrim animation still: Wulf

Character design observation

Knowing it’s Wulf takes the fun out of guessing, but the dark hair is typical of Dunlending ancestry. I do wonder how he gained the scar over the right eye. There must be an explanation for that at some point, for sure. Who, or what, was he fighting?

Location

Stonework in the background could be Edoras, or it could be Helm’s Deep (besieging it). Really hard to say. The ropes around the wooden structure behind Wulf seem like some sort of temporary structure however. They could be siege-works. The concept art for the fall of Edoras (now well over two years old!) seems more indicative of a short, brutal siege led by the Mumakil not an extended one that requires siege-works.

Also it is winter though and it is snowing, and the siege of Helm’s Deep occurred during the Long Winter that was notably harsh.

Detail

I like the blurring on the snowflakes. It makes me wonder if they’ve filmed a snowfall and slipped that footage in – it doesn’t look like animation motions smears to me. But perhaps I’m wrong.

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New Line Cinema and Adult Swim’s upcoming anime film spinoff to The Lord of the Rings, titled The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, is still shrouded in mystery even after an industry-only preview last summer. The all-star production, starring Miranda Otto and Brian Cox, is led by Oscar winning LOTR Executive Producer Philippa Boyens and the highly respected production team behind Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

The initial announcement in 2021 listed the Emmy winning writing team behind Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who spent a year exploring the story. Since then the script has gone through normal retooling, eventually landing a new credited screenwriting duo: Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou.

Billed as the next generation of writers by EP Boyens, childhood friends Phoebe and Arty initially were brought in to write background dialog for the movie. Through the creative process, it became apparent that their youthful perspective – raised on the exploding growth of anime — helped the film’s collaboration with the Japanese director Kenji Kamiyama and animation studio Sola Entertainment. Plus, who better to tell the story of Héra [Editor’s note: the name’s not taken from the Greek, but from the Anglo-saxon] than someone closer in age?

In a brand-new interview with Nerd of the Rings, writers Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou join excecutive producer Philippa Boyens for an in-depth conversation on bringing the history of Rohirrim and Rohan’s shieldmaidens to the big screen. Enjoy this exclusive preview of the conversation, edited for format and clarity, which will be posted in full tomorrow.

Delivering the characters where Kamiyama needs them to be

Q: Tell us a bit about Helm Hammerhand (namesake of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers)

Phoebe: I find one of the most redeeming qualities of Helm in the film is his love for his children. Sounds a little cheesy but some of my favorite parts of the storytelling is the relationship between Helm and Héra (his daughter and main protagonist of the film). There’s a lot of tension and a lot of conflict there, but you know at the heart there is this deep father-daughter bond. Those moments were really special, writing and working on those. That’s one of my favorite things about Helm: this love for his children. It’s so nice.

How do we as writers deliver the characters to a place that Director Kamiyama want them to be at the end of the film? That was a really fun journey to try and take on, and figure out how to do that.

Q: Did you guys revisit the films before embarking on this?

Phoebe: Didn’t really need to. I grew up with them!

Arty: I grew up around the corner from Weta Workshop. But also growing up in Wellington at that time it was infectious. It was impossible not to be captivated by this huge film being shot in the hills behind you. At night you go to bed and you look up to the hills behind with film lights. Might be normal in other places, but it certainly wasn’t normal in Wellington. It really was just like the coolest thing! My friends and I still watch the movies every Christmas, so it wasn’t a matter of trying to fall back into the world of the cinematic Middle-earth. Here was a really amazing opportunity to try and think about animation and Anime, and how that could bring a fresh look not only visually but also thematically.

Philippa: I remember the hesitation. I thought you guys would turn us down (to write on Rohirrim)!

Arty: The deep respect for what had already been done! It’s stressful because what’s going on here? It’s just what comes with it. There’s these podcasts and bloggers and YouTube channels (looks at Nerd of the Rings) who are going to judge and fly out to your country to meet up with you while you’re trying to finish the film to make sure you’re doing a good job. So that was came with a lot of a lot a lot of trepidation!

Phoebe: For us, we didn’t see foresee that being a problem because so many of the same players are making this film. You have Philippa producing, but you also have the same sound teams. You have Mike Hedges (LOTR). You’ve got Steven Gallagher composing (The Hobbit). You’ve got John Howe, Alan Lee, Richard Taylor. For us, that opened up space to be like, how do we make this blend with the world of anime. It was actually more about coming from that direction. We knew the film was in pretty sick hands!

Q: Well you guys grew up on anime too.

Arty: We grew up not just on anime but Japanese cinema in general. That wasn’t the brief (for Rohirrim) but I was such a fan of different Japanese genre films and directors. It just seemed like, this is such a cool opportunity to draw on a whole bunch of other influences in adapting this material. It ended up going from this is really scary, to wow this is so exciting. Then what sold us completely was seeing some concept art and it was like, oh hell yeah.

It also helped that we happen to be in Covid lockdown in Queenstown, and we’re walking daily by different LOTR film locations. So that probably helped a lot as well to get in the zone.

Phoebe: Yeah we were in the zone!

Q: Did you have any moments like that where you a saw an interesting connection to what has come before?

Arty: What is interesting is re-reading the books. You sort of pick up on different things and like, oh wow, it really is informed by some of these things which took place in the books. Whether at the time we were totally aware of it or not, you know it was just ingrained in us. That’s been interesting.

The full interview with Boyens, Gittins and Papageorgiou

Like what you’re hearing from the writers of the new LOTR film? This spur-of-the-moment opportunity for Matt (Nerd of the Rings) to chat with them during his filming schedule at Weta Workshop was a real treat one the first time these new writers have ever done an interview. The full conversation is 90 minutes on his YouTube channel. Join TORn’s daily active chat about Rohirrim on Discord.

Big thanks to Matt at Nerd of the Rings for sharing his exclusive interview for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Watch the entire conversation on YouTube, and join us on TORn Tuesday as Matt talks about landing the interview and other fun facts he learned. War of the Rohirrim releases in December 2024 in theaters worldwide.

TORn’s complete The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim coverage

• Phillipa Boyens talks WOTR exclusively with TheOnering.net.
• In-depth report from the Annecy Animation Festival showcase.
• A short interview with Kamiyama, Chou and Boyens from Annecy.
• Speculation: Saruman in The War of the Rohirrim.
• Speculation: Mûmakil in The War of the Rohirrim.
• Casting: Alex Jordan is “Lord Frygt”.
• Music: Stephen Gallagher to compose.

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Here’s a somewhat overlooked piece of news from a little while back! On June 15, voice actor Alex Jordan announced that he had a part in the Warner Bros Animation/New Line Cinema feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

However, it seems that his name was inadvertently omitted from the orginal English voice cast list given to Deadline at the same time. As a result, knowledge of Jordan’s involvement pretty much slipped under the radar.

More interestingly, Jordan has provided the name of the character he will be voicing — an completely original character by the name of Lord Frygt.

Seemingly a strange name, but Scandanavian friends on TORn’s IRC channel tell me that Frygt is a Danish word that means “fear”. One could interpret it as Lord Fear or Lord Fright.

At first I wondered, if the use of Danish could be related to the use of Anglo-Saxon to name the other original character we’ve heard of so far — Helm’s daughter, Héra.

Is it meant to be a Dunlending word? Unfortunately, the only Dunlending word we know of is “forgoil”. It seems to impossible to judge by extrapolating our knowledge of Tolkien. But Dunlending is supposedly related to the language of the Haladin, so it seems more likely it might be Rohirric? I’m no language expert so if anyone knows better, let me know!

A name like Lord Fear seems a little ominous as a name for someone of the Rohirrim. Could it be a Dunlending person instead? That seems a little unlikely since the leaders of the Dunlending faction are the Rohirrim lords (and outlaws), Freca and Wulf.

Instead, perhaps it’s meant to be an appellation give by either the Rohirrim or the Dunlendings to something else. Because I’m reminded of something that Philippa Boyens said when I interviewed her in June just after the casting announcement:

I can give you a little tease and let you know that, although we said this isn’t about The Ring and this isn’t about the Dark Lord … there are the White Mountains and there are creatures [out there]. We know that there were orcs around this area.

Exclusive: Philippa Boyens talks The War of The Rohirrim with TheOneRing.net

She also confirmed that these creatures she’s referring to are definitely not the dead men of Erech.

I think Lord Frygt will emerge as some non-human being feared by either the Dunlendings, or by the Rohirrim. Or both.

The War of the Rohirrim will be released in theatres worldwide on April 12, 2024.

About the author: Staffer Demosthenes has been involved with TheOneRing.net since 2001, serving first as an Associate News Editor, then as Chief News Editor during the making of the Hobbit films. Now he focuses on features and analysis. The opinions in this article are his own and do not necessarily represent those of TheOneRing.net and other staff.

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Executive Producer Philippa Boyens is pretty pleased with the casting for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

“It’s exciting — we’ve been sitting on it for a little bit,” she says. “[But] it all seemed to come together in an organic way, which is what you want, I think. Suddenly, the right people come to the role.”

We’re speaking via a slightly crackly telephone hook-up just a couple days after the voice casting announcement that includes the news that renowned Scottish actor Brian Cox will be Helm Hammerhand, while Miranda Otto makes an unexpected return to Middle-earth as Éowyn in a narrative role.

An oral tradition

Boyens says that bringing in Otto as narrator was not an immediate decision. Rather it was one that gradually emerged.

She explains that Éowyn eventually felt like the natural way into the bloody and grim tale from Rohan’s past.

“Her voice was familiar,” she says. “And then I think it started to come easily for the writers.”

She hopes that it will also help locate the story for film fans who are unfamiliar with deeper cuts from Middle-earth’s history.

Yet that was not the only reason — an oral tradition felt fitting.

“It’s also so fragmentary, what we are dealing with in terms of the source material. It’s little bits of references here and there … so the oral tradition felt kind of right. The oral tradition of her telling the tale, passing the tale on.”

She doesn’t divulge to whom. But one guesses it is likely her grandson, Barahir. Tolkien not only names Barahir in The Lord of the Rings (solving any potential rights-access issues that would arise with her son, Elboron), he is also an in-world scholar and the author of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen.

Helm Hammerhand: a complex and epic role

Boyens says that both the film’s director Kenji Kamiyama, and Warner Bros SVP and producer Jason DeMarco, were well aware of Brian Cox from his recent voice role in the English dub of Blade Runner: Black Lotus.

“They’re huge fans, of course,” she says.

“Weirdly, years ago — and this is me aging myself — I tried to go and see Brian’s performance as Titus Andronicus.”

She describes how this 1987 run of the Shakespeare tragedy directed by Deborah Warner has attained a legendary status.

“It was just one of those ones which was fresh and shocking,” she says.

“And it [the Andronicus role] wasn’t a role — this is from Brian himself — that many of the other actors were interested in taking on. But he connected to it. I couldn’t get a ticket, but I had a couple of friends saw it who were just blown away. And they talked about the way in which his rage was fuelled by this grief. And the underlying horror that was in the storytelling.

“And that kind of resonated with me when we were thinking about the Helm role. Because it just — it spans a lot of different emotions.”

She says the role — and the film — is about delving into Helm’s choices.

“And the mistakes he made as well. And then his acknowledgement of those mistakes. Was there an acknowledgement of those mistakes?” she asks.

At different points she notes Helm’s hot-temperedness, and how he almost certainly under-estimated the Rohirrim lord, Wulf, who after he is outlawed leads the Dunlending invasion of Rohan.

“[Yet], I saw the tales of him slipping out [of the Hornburg] during the siege and attacking the camp for his people as literally someone trying — even with their bare hands – to protect the people as the king should,” she adds.

“So he was a true manifestation of the king-protector.”

Helm’s heirs and the overthrow of Edoras

The grim reality, though, is that Helm is unable to protect his children.

His eldest son, Haleth, is slain when Edoras is overrun and taken by Wulf’s forces while Helm is forced to take refuge in the Hornburg. We touch only briefly on Helm’s other son but I conclude that his Hama’s fate will remain the same tragedy that it is in Appendix A.

Boyens describes the first as a shocking and powerful moment. Powerful, perhaps, for readers, to finally see things they’ve long envisaged through Tolkien’s descriptions; shocking for film fans to see the unexpected — Edoras besieged and overthrown.

On the other hand, Tolkien leaves the fate of Helm’s daughter unclear. In fact, he never names her even though Freca’s bid for her hand in marriage for his son, Wulf, is a key catalyst for war. Boyens concedes that we simply do not know a lot about her.

“Where we turn to, very deliberately, is to Æthelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians. Alfred the Great’s daughter,” Boyens says, and proceeds to provide a rapid-fire education on an era of British history that I’d barely known of until now.

“She never ruled as a queen per se; she’s known as the Lady of Mercians. But she seems to step in when her people needed her.

“Æthelflæd was also really ingenious, which comes into play in the script. [It] was an idea that Kamiyama had, and they (he and the writers) played with that. I can’t tell you too much about it. But it’s about how you save your life when you have very little to work with?”

It’s a statement that seems to suggest that Helm’s daughter – who they’ve chosen to name Héra – will play some key role after the fall of Edoras to Wulf, and the death of Haleth.

“And I really don’t think that Professor Tolkien would hate this,” Boyens says. “Because I always see him as a bit of a Mercian himself being from the Midlands.”

Héra: so named as a nod to the Anglo-Saxon

Unsurprisingly, the name Héra is chosen for alliterative effect: Helm, Haleth, Hama, Héra. Yet Boyens reveals that wasn’t initially the case.

“Someone suggested another name and I went: “Nope, it’s gotta start with “H”, sorry”,” she says.

“Actually, Fran Walsh named her. I told her we were stuck. It’s actually Héra (I get a quick pronunciation lesson and discover the é functions a little like the “ai” in hair) — that’s why it has the accent. Not so much based on the Greek [goddess] Hera, but a nod to the Anglo-Saxon.

“And I like to think she wasn’t a character that [the writers] tried to create wholesale — pulling things out of thin air. Héra is very much drawing from sources that fit with the storytelling that Tolkien himself is drawing on.”

In case you’re wondering, Boyens confirms that neither Fran Walsh nor Peter Jackson have an official production role. It’s more that, since they’re long-time collaborators and have so much experience within Tolkien’s Middle-earth, they’re sometimes just a natural sounding board for ideas.

“I also want to give a shout out to Gaia Wise who voices Héra. I think you guys are going fall in love with her. She is fantastic, she’s amazing. She just had such innate sense of who the character is and how to play her. She was great.

“She had a very natural sense of fiery-ness, but without it being petulance defiance.”

Mûmakil, mercenaries and money

While we’re discussing events at Edoras, conversation inevitably veers toward the Mûmakil that were prominent in the initial concept art released in January.

Boyens agrees with TORn’s suggestions about why Mûmakil might be present at the siege of Edoras.

“A lot of your supposition was right in that article from our viewpoint,” she says. She more or less adds only a single word to that: mercenaries.

“I think it works. I think it’s not against what you could infer from what we know.”

That might perplex some. But Tolkien Gateway seems to provide an element of support: the word “Variag” (as in the Variags of Khand) is a Slavic word derived from the Norse Varingar — “mercenary people”.  Moreover, Tolkien’s notes to translators imagined the Corsairs as “similar to the Mediterranean corsairs: sea-robbers with fortified bases”. During the 16^th Century, the Barbary Corsairs of the Mediterranean regularly used wealthy backers to finance their raids, in turn paying them a share of the plunder.

“In order to understand the use of those [ideas],” Boyens says, “you need to understand the character of Wulf and the position that Wulf is in — and had found himself in. And who he would be turning to.”

At this point she pulls in another fact, mentioning the great wealth of Wulf’s father, Freca.

“His father was not an insignificant Lord of Rohan. He had indeed grown fat and prospered,” she says, referencing Helm’s comment in Appendix A about Freca’s large waistline.

Boyens doesn’t expand any further, but my own guess is that The War of the Rohirrim will establish Wulf as the organising mind behind coordinated assaults on Gondor and Rohan, using resources wealth from his father to secure the assistance of Corsairs and Haradrim.

As Appendix A states:

Four years later (2758) great troubles came to Rohan, and no help could be sent from Gondor, for three fleets of the Corsairs attacked it and there was war on all its coasts. At the same time Rohan was again invaded from the East, and the Dunlendings seeing their chance came over the Isen and down from Isengard.

It was soon known that Wulf was their leader. They were in great force, for they were joined by enemies of Gondor that landed in the mouths of Lefnui and Isen.

A human struggle that becomes increasingly claustrophobic

If this sounds like a very human — and political — struggle, Boyens concurs. I suggest the absence of elves, dwarves and hobbits makes it a very different tale to The Lord of the Rings that most know.

She indicates that this was one of the reasons for choosing Helm’s story.

“It’s not about the Ring, it’s not about the Dark Lord. All of that is very peripheral to the story.”

She says it’s also the attraction of examining honour, revenge and familial ties — on both sides.

For Helm, there’s madness born of grief from the loss of the child. With Wulf, there’s his relationship with his father, and with Héra.

“He is his father’s son, but he has a different character. So he does actually offer [to wed] her and the writers asked: ‘Why?’ What was driving him? Was it just his father demanding that he do this? Was it his ambition? What was at play there?”

Even the historical grievances of the Dunlendings — that the lords of Gondor gave what the Dunlendings felt was their land to the Rohirrim — should come through in the film.

She says that all those things are in the Helm tale.

“When I talked to Kamiyama about it, it resonated with him. So that was the genesis,” she says.

“And there’s a moment in the film, which is incredibly gut-wrenching and powerful where Wulf commits himself to a course of action he cannot turn away from. And once he does that, the story darkens.”

She says it was here that the screenwriters Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou really connected with Kamiyama.

“So, yes, it begins with these quite large-scale battles, but it actually becomes more intense and … claustrophobic,” Boyens says.

“And the nature of the film changes almost into a ghost story.

“As the siege takes hold, as the rumours of horror begin to spread. And I can give you a little tease and let you know that, although we said this isn’t about The Ring and this isn’t about the Dark Lord … there are the White Mountains and there are creatures [out there].”

Somewhat to my relief she squashes speculation that she might be referring to the Dead of Erech. Instead, she suggests that orcs inhabited the area — a historically more agreeable inclusion.

“Also, I can just add — and I thought it was, again, really interesting in the way that Kamiyama approached this — this was a long, cold winter that was hurting everyone.”

This suggests that there won’t be space to see Gondor’s own struggles. Gondor may come to the rescue in the end, but it seems the focus will be squarely on a life-and-death struggle within Rohan.

She won’t even confirm or deny the presence of Saruman the White in the film. We’ll just have to wait and see.

About the author: Staffer Demosthenes has been involved with TheOneRing.net since 2001, serving first as an Associate News Editor, then as Chief News Editor during the making of the Hobbit films. Now he focuses on features and analysis. The opinions in this article are his own and do not necessarily represent those of TheOneRing.net and other staff.

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According to Deadline, Brian Cox is set to perform the English voice role for Helm Hammerhand in Warner Bros. Animation’s upcoming anime feature, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

Helm Hammerhand is described as the protaganist of the tale, but the real surprise is the inclusion of Miranda Otto. Otto will reprise her Éowyn role from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and serve as the film’s narrator.

In addition, Gaia Wise voices Hammerhand’s daughter, Hera. Luke Pasqualinoi will voice the Dunlending chieftain Wulf.

The story outline given to Deadline is as follows:

The anime feature, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, is set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg — a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep. Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Hera, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.

Helm’s daughter is not named in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings. However, the story describes how relations between Helm and Wulf’s father Freca sour dramatically after Freca attempts to use her as a political pawn. Her ultimate fate is one of the mysteries of the ensuing war.

Warner Bros. Animation has also released a new piece of concept art that appears to show Helm at the gate of his eponymous fortress. It’s reminiscent of this scene during the depths of the Long Winter:

One night men heard the horn blowing, but Helm did not return. In the morning there came a sun-gleam, the first for long days, and they saw a white figure standing still on the Dike, alone, for none of the Dunlendings dared come near. There stood Helm, dead as a stone, but his knees were unbent.

The Lord of the Rings: Appendix A.

The voice ensemble also includes Lorraine Ashbourne (Netflix’s Bridgerton), Yazdan Qafouri (I Came By), Benjamin Wainwright (BBC One’s World on Fire), Laurence Ubong Williams (Gateway), Shaun Dooley (Netflix’s The Witcher), Michael Wildman (Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), Jude Akuwudike (Beasts of No Nation), Bilal Hasna (BBC’s Sparks) and Janine Duvitski (ITV’s Benidorm).

The film will be released on April 12, 2024.

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• Headlines
• Miranda Otto
• New Line Cinema
• Philippa Boyens
• Warner Bros.

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