All projects related to
The Lord of the Rings
it carries the label of "expected" and that is also the case of the series that Amazon Prime Video prepares.
The television adaptation of the JRR Tolkien universe has just finished filming its first season on Tuesday, which has taken place in New Zealand and consists of eight episodes.
It already has a release date: it will arrive on Friday, September 2, 2022 in more than 240 countries through the
streaming
platform
.
This ambitious production, which serves the company to try to find its own
Game of Thrones
and thus hook millions of viewers for several years, will show for the first time on screen the legendary Second Age of the history of Middle-earth.
The plot of the series will begin millennia before the events narrated in
The Hobbit
and
The Lord of the Rings
, in a moment of relative peace for its characters, and follows a cast of characters known and new by the followers of the saga, explains the platform in a statement.
Can a € 400 million series be profitable for platforms?
The Spanish Juan Antonio Bayona has been in charge of directing the first two episodes after participating in the
Jurassic Park
saga
, while the British Wayne Che Yip, who has directed several of the international successes of his country's television in recent times, as
Utopia
,
Misfits
and
Doctor Who
, he will take the baton and shoot another four installments of this initial season. Both also act as executive producers, along with the Spanish Belén Atienza (
Penny Dreadful
,
A monster comes to see me
,
The innocent
), among others. The remaining two chapters will feature the French-Swiss Charlotte Brändström (
The Witcher
,
Madame Secretary
) behind the camera.
The start of the series, which has been in preparation since 2017, will cost Amazon Prime Video a record figure of 383 million euros, as confirmed three months ago by the American publication
Variety.
The budget beats other expensive television productions such as
The Mandalorian
(from Disney +),
The Morning Show
(from Apple TV +) and
HBO's
own
Game of Thrones
.
The heirs of Tolkien, who died in 1973, closely monitor how his estate is managed. In their day, they supervised the blockbuster films of Peter Jackson to ensure that they stayed true to the texts of their author and the same has happened with this series. So, in addition to Bayona's experience to lay the foundations for this adaptation, they have enlisted Tolkien expert Tom Shippey for the production design. The choral cast is made up of actors relatively unknown to the public, such as Maxim Baldry, seen in
Years & Years,
Cynthia Addai-Robinson (
Arrow
) and Kip Chapman (
Top of the Lake
).
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