In The Media: What Say You?

[Anduin]

2 hours ago, paigow said:

She was a regular cast member of Spartacus so sword fighting and archery are not new to her...

That was filmed in NZ too, wasn't it?

[paulvdb]

Yes, Spartacus was filmed in New Zealand. She was also Amanda Waller on Arrow. And I guess Lenny Henry was mostly famous in the UK? I had heard of him in the 1990s. None of the other names looked familiar at first glance, but I watch a lot of shows and I don't always remember actors' names. So maybe I have seen some of them before.

[MissLucas]

So, here's a vague synopsis dropped today over at the OneRing.net:

Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

And yes, the discussion about Morgoth or Sauron being the greatest villain is already raging on the internets.

Edited January 14, 2021 by MissLucas

[Anduin]

The reference to Lindon is a surprising one. I had to look it up. A kingdom with its power long faded by the end of third age. Its capital was the Grey Havens, and a little up and down the coast from there. Didn't even reach as far inland as the Shire.

[Haleth]

5 hours ago, MissLucas said:

And yes, the discussion about Morgoth or Sauron being the greatest villain is already ragging on the internets.

Lol. I was giving the article the side eye with that. 

[MissLucas]

17 hours ago, Anduin said:

The reference to Lindon is a surprising one. I had to look it up. A kingdom with its power long faded by the end of third age. Its capital was the Grey Havens, and a little up and down the coast from there. Didn't even reach as far inland as the Shire.

After reading that link (thanks btw.) I must say it sounds like an intriguing choice. Established in lore with enough gaps to fill in. I guess that means we get to see Gil-Galad and maybe Cirdan.

[BetterButter]

‘The Lord of the Rings’ TV Series Actor Tom Budge Walks Away From the Show

[Anduin]

3 hours ago, BetterButter said:

‘The Lord of the Rings’ TV Series Actor Tom Budge Walks Away From the Show

That's a misleading headline. It's not so much that he left, but the producers didn't want him. Frankly, I don't know what to make of the news. I have no way of knowing if he was good or bad. I just want to see it and decide.

Of course, we're going to get WOT first. And that hasn't even properly started its news/hype cycle yet. So it's still a way off.

[AnimeMania]

‘The Lord Of the Rings’: Blockbuster Budget For Season 1 Is Revealed As New Zealand Ups Amazon Series’ Rebate

The season 1 budget for The Lord Of the Rings, $465 million, confirmed by Deadline, is a massive number; Game of Thrones reportedly cost around $10 million an episode on average ($100 million a season), starting lower in the early seasons and climbing well above $10 million per episode in the final stretch.

The extra startup costs will be amortized over future seasons. (Like the movies, The Lord of the Rings series also plans to shoot seasons back-to-back, which would reduce Season 2 costs.)

The West Auckland-based The Lord Of the Rings, an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels, was close to finishing the first two episodes, directed by J.A. Bayona, when production shut down in mid-March 2020 amid the escalating global pandemic. As Deadline had reported , in conjunction with an early Season 2 renewal for the big-budget fantasy drama, the LOTR series was scheduled to go on a 4-5-month hiatus after filming the first two episodes, so the shutdown segued into the planned hiatus, timed to coincide with the New Zealand winter. The writing team of the series, led by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, used the time to map out and write Season 2 scripts.

Filming resumed in late September.

The series employs more than 1,200 people, and approximately 700 workers are indirectly employed by providing services to the production, the New Zealand government said, as quoted by Reuters.

[rmontro]

11 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

‘The season 1 budget for The Lord Of the Rings, $465 million, confirmed by Deadline, is a massive number

Yikes, that's a huge number.  It almost makes me nervous.  There might end up being fewer seasons if costs that much.  

[Anduin]

3 hours ago, rmontro said:

Yikes, that's a huge number.  It almost makes me nervous.  There might end up being fewer seasons if costs that much.  

Some people are speculating that being a startup number. Once all the sets, props, costumes, etc are done, it'll be cheaper. Alternately, that's the cost of the first two seasons which will be shot back to back. Since reports say that it'll be eight eps a season, my calculator says that's $290,625 an episode.

If I had a time machine, the first thing I'd do is jump ahead maybe three years, catch up on LOTR, then go back and do the expected activities.

[Anduin]

Official confirmation of a new director, Charlotte Brändström. She's mostly done TV movies and episodes of shows, a good list of credits. Interestingly, she did two eps of Counterpart with Nazanin Boniadi.

[paigow]

On 4/17/2021 at 10:35 AM, AnimeMania said:

The season 1 budget for The Lord Of the Rings, $465 million, confirmed by Deadline, is a massive number

Cheaper than the yacht Bezos got....

• Titanic: 900 ft
• USS Los Angeles [Nuclear Submarine]: 362 ft 
• Bezos: 417 ft

[AnimeMania]

The Lord of the Rings Stuntwoman Facing Emergency Brain Surgery

After taking a massive blow to the head during the production of Amazon's Lord of the Rings series, stuntwoman Dayna Grant, was exhibiting signs of Traumatic Brain Injury. Neuroimaging CT and MRI scans revealed that she is in need of emergency surgery for a brain aneurysm and spinal issues. These injuries are not the result of her work on the set of The Lord of the Rings. Dayna Grant has a website for donations to collect the $NZ60,000 needed for her surgery, they are very close to reaching their goal.

Followup

Dayna Grant To Undergo Brain Surgery After Lucy Lawless, Others Help Raise Money; Top Stuntwoman Sustained Concussion On ‘LOTR’ Set Earlier This Year

Edited July 1, 2021 by AnimeMania
Followup

[BetterButter]

Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Rounds Out Sprawling Cast

[BetterButter]

Former stuntperson calls out Amazon's Lord Of The Rings show: "So unsafe"

[Anduin]

A few days ago, TheOneRing.net said on twitter that they'd just received a spy report. Today they said that something big drops tomorrow. That's when their podcast goes up. The big question, how strong am I? Can I carry the ring to the fire and resist temptation, or am I corrupted like Sméagol on his birthday? I'm leaning towards corrupted.

[Anduin]

As expected, I got my Sméagol on. The article is here. Interesting. I don't actually know how I feel about it. Outside of just plain wanting to see it, of course. Weirdly, it mentions that there are foiler units doing filming. That's how dedicated Amazon is to stopping leaks. Which brings two points to mind. First, no wonder the budget is so high if you're paying for multiple decoys. Second, how do we know anything in that article is in fact real? Maybe it could all be a foiler.

However, I believe the part about filming being completed and the cast bopping around to other roles. Alex Tarrant recently got a job on another show, while Benjamin Walker's wife Kaya Scodelario headed home to England a few days ago. Individually not enough to prove anything, but it checks out.

[Haleth]

Interesting. I still have concerns that this will be a GoT wannabe, but I will watch. 

[MissLucas]

Quote

Certain creatures are referred to as Ice Trolls because they can’t be called Cave Trolls (Warner Bros. licensing restriction)

Huh? You can license Cave Trolls?

[paulvdb]

‘The Lord Of The Rings’ TV Series Gets Amazon Premiere Date & First-Look Photo

Quote

Filming wrapped today on Season 1 of Amazon Studios’ highly anticipated Lord of The Rings TV series and we now have a premiere date. The studio has set Friday, September 2, 2022, for the debut of the first season of the yet-to-be-titled series. New episodes will be released weekly, exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 territories and countries worldwide.

Just in case you read the date as quickly as I initially did without paying attention to the year: that's next year, not next month.

 

[DanaK]

2 minutes ago, paulvdb said:

‘The Lord Of The Rings’ TV Series Gets Amazon Premiere Date & First-Look Photo

Just in case you read the date as quickly as I initially did without paying attention to the year: that's next year, not next month.

 

I'm glad you pointed that out as I misread that myself. I thought Sep 2021 seemed a little early for the show to be ready. I hope it's worth over $400 million for Season 1. I can't help but remember the Fox dino series that cost them a ton, took longer to finish than they would have liked, and didn't get good enough ratings for a second season

[Anduin]

That photo. I think it's the Grey Havens. The architecture reminds me a bit of the other elven settlements, but I found a higher res pic. It has water access. Thus, Havens. Though it could be Númenor.

Edit! Tirion! Lightice points out you can see the two trees over to the right. Wow. I never expected to see Valinor with my waking eyes. Which would make that figure Galadriel, with short or bunned up hair.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Anduin

[MissLucas]

Noticed the Trees right away. Color me confused - I thought we were dealing with the Second Age. Of course flashbacks are still an option. And if that's Galadriel she's done a lot of swimming 😁 My money's on Finrod with a man-bun.

[Anduin]

32 minutes ago, MissLucas said:

Noticed the Trees right away. Color me confused - I thought we were dealing with the Second Age. Of course flashbacks are still an option. And if that's Galadriel she's done a lot of swimming 😁 My money's on Finrod with a man-bun.

Galadriel was born and raised in Valinor. She only went east later.

[MissLucas]

8 minutes ago, Anduin said:

Galadriel was born and raised in Valinor. She only went east later.

I was talking about the shoulders of that person - I blame all the Olympics coverage 😁

[Anduin]

15 minutes ago, MissLucas said:

I was talking about the shoulders of that person - I blame all the Olympics coverage 😁

They don't look broader than the average to me. But how much time did Galadriel spend on the Valinor coast? Or maybe Morfydd Clark likes the water. Who knows, huh? We'll see next September.

[Featherhat]

It doesn't have to be Galadriel, even if it's a flashback, there are still some Noldor from Valinor around in the 2nd Age, although Galadriel was the last of the leaders who was born there. It could also be a prologue showing the Age of the Trees/Noontide of Valinor. 

I clocked the Trees right away but they do have a habit of mimicking Tirion wherever they go (think Minas Tirith) so it could have been Numenor. 

I'm cautiously interested in this. But I hope it keeps it's "Tolkeinesque" spirit. I did enjoy the LOTR trilogy and liked *bits* of The Hobbit. 

Quote

They don't look broader than the average to me. But how much time did Galadriel spend on the Valinor coast? Or maybe Morfydd Clark likes the water. Who knows, huh? We'll see next September.

At the risk of coming across as too much of a Silm/UT geek, her Mother Name was Nerwen which means "Man Maiden" for her height and strength, so being broad shouldered is fine for the character. And her mother's people lived by the coast so....;) 

Edited August 3, 2021 by Featherhat

[rmontro]

September '22, yikes.  Originally there was talk of Fall '21, then I was hoping maybe early '22, but September '22 that seems a ways off.  I guess it's just a little over a year.

I was thinking that picture might have been Gondolin, until Anduin pointed out the Two Trees.  Very cool.  Hard to say what stories they are going for.  Showing Valinor might just be a quick flashback like The Last Alliance against Sauron at the beginning of the LOTR films.

[AnimeMania]

1 hour ago, rmontro said:

September '22, yikes.

I am hoping that that means that Season 2 will come out in a timely manner. (Saying this as someone waiting for Season 2 of "Carnival Row" from Amazon.) This might also suggest that there are tons of awesome special effects to add.

[Anduin]

In surprising news, production moves to the UK for season 2. I get it. Over half the cast is from there. Most of the rest are from other places in the northern hemisphere. There's a deeper pool of experienced crew and name actors. Tolkien was inspired by the English landscape.

However, what about the half a billion they spent in New Zealand? What about the look of the show? What about covid? I don't know what to think.

[tv echo]

Friday, Sept. 2,..

2022 TV Preview: House of the Dragon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Naomi, She-Hulk and 16 More Shows We're Excited About
By Team TVLine / December 31 2021
https://tvline.com/lists/best-new-tv-shows-2022-house-of-the-dragon-obi-wan-kenobi/ 

Quote

THE LORD OF THE RINGS (Prime Video)
...
WHY IT EXCITES US: Um, because it’s The Lord of the Freaking Rings? Amazon is sparing no expense to take us back to Middle-earth, reportedly spending nearly a half-billion dollars on just the first season of the hotly anticipated J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation. And this series takes place during the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so we’ll meet a host of new characters — along with some familiar immortal ones like the ethereal elf Galadriel. Amazon is really hoping this turns out to be their Game of Thrones, and we can’t wait to see how close they get.

SERIES PREMIERE DATE: Friday, Sept. 2

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by tv echo

[AnimeMania]

 

[Anduin]

I've only just woken up, but my day is already made! More thoughts later when I've properly woken up.

[AnimeMania]

The Rings of Powers Logo Needed LOTR-Level Effort To Make

Here is a look at how they made the video, smoothly pouring the metal into the wood to make the Logo for the show.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power refers to the 19 other Rings that Sauron had forged alongside his iconic Ring of Power. Sauron distributed the extra rings amongst the other Middle-earth rulers, with nine being given to the Kings of Men, seven to the Dwarf-lords, and three to the Elves.  

Lord of the Rings TV Show Story Details Revealed In First Synopsis

Hoping for at least five seasons. Season 1 will be eight episodes.

Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back  to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and one of the greatest villains that ever flowed from Tolkien's pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative piece, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared reemergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the farthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

Edited January 19, 2022 by AnimeMania

[Anduin]

Okay, I'm somewhat more awake now. I still love it. Weird not hearing Cate Blanchett doing the VO, but I'm fine with that. And frankly, it's just a title announcement. Not much more to say anyway. Water washes across the screen when she says mortal men. Slight hint there. A mountain when she talks about Mordor, which is a nice touch. All in all, I want to see more!

[WritinMan]

Well...that was disappointing.

[Anduin]

Rumour time! The One Ring.Net thinks there will be a teaser or trailer at the Superbowl halftime, 13 Feb. I think it's too early. They didn't put up a proper Wheel of Time trailer until a couple of months beforehand. Maybe if there was anything else special to Tolkien fans happening around then, sure. But as far as I know, it's a wasteland. I don't expect anything before the six-month point at the very earliest.

Of course, given that TORN has sources and my powers of prediction, they may well be onto something. But I'm not holding out hope.

[paulvdb]

They do seem to do things early for this show. The premiere date was announced more than a year in advance which is very unusual.

[Anduin]

3 hours ago, paulvdb said:

They do seem to do things early for this show. The premiere date was announced more than a year in advance which is very unusual.

That's a good point. Further proof that I don't know anything and you'd be a fool to trust me. :( Ah well.

[AnimeMania]

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has just released a series of around 23 posters of hands and the things they carry in them. I am sure somebody versed in the lore might recognize important characters based on what they carry, but I don't feel comfortable posting that many images, so I will post 3 and look for a website that might have all the rest and link to it in a later post.

[MissLucas]

The first one must be a Rohirrim sword. Maybe we get to see Eorl the Younger. The second one is a Niphredil flower. The third one is obviously a villain sword - could be Sauron or the Witch King.

[AnimeMania]

Here is a link to "all?" the posters.

‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Unveils New Middle-Earth Character Posters

This link is numbered so if you want to identify them all, this would be the one to use.

The Lord of the Rings TV Series Reveals Mysterious Character Posters

Edited February 3, 2022 by AnimeMania

[Anduin]

Every bleary morning should start with Lord of the Rings content! Anyway, Gizmodo has the full posters with some commentary. And Corey Olsen is doing a full analysis stream. It'll be on Signum in a while.

[Anduin]

Some observations. Good to see a pair of black hands in there. While I'm white, I realise how badly POC have been served by the universe. Some more representation is no bad thing.

In other news, what's with the elaborate hilt on Narsil? Surely that can't be made for fighting. I've watched enough videos on real vs fantasy weapons to know that fancy weapons do not equal practical weapons.

A sickle is a farming tool. Given the food pictures, I sense a theme of bringing together the 'everyman' and the nobles. That's a good one. In line with LOTR. Sam never met Théoden, but he certainly met Legolas, Galadriel, and Aragorn.

Okay, now I have Goldfinger in my head. Come on, you were thinking it too.

The figure in red with a book, I think that's a woman. Nails a bit long for a man, plus the rope goes under the cleavage. Like a certain kind of period dress.

Sunburst on the sword. Minas Arnor reference? Tower of the Sun? Either way, it looks cool.

Those black gauntlets really look like ebony gauntlets in Skyrim. It's distracting. Maybe I should play some different games. :)

[MissLucas]

So many hands. I'm starting to wonder if the show really just deals with the Second Age because there's stuff here that would fit very well into the First Age. the Sword pommel with the tower for example could stand for Gondolin. Since I'm spitballing (aka wishful thinking) but the hands carrying berries and acorns could be Ents and Entwives (assuming that Ents looked less treeish before the split). And yeah, the Rohirrim sword would also not fit into the Second Age. As I said, just spitballing.

[Haleth]

The only one I could identify definitively was #23 the Elven sword.

Narsil looks too decorative. 

[Anduin]

10 hours ago, MissLucas said:

And yeah, the Rohirrim sword would also not fit into the Second Age.

I wonder if it belongs to someone else with a strong horse affiliation. Maybe a horse breeder or stable master kind of character.

9 hours ago, Haleth said:

Narsil looks too decorative. 

Yeah. Funny choice there. The other swords look fancy, but more practical.

[Anduin]

Update! The black sword isn't Narsil. Corey Olsen thinks it looks too evil to be the sword of a hero. It has a spike on the pommel. He doesn't know if it's a known weapon, but he thought it might be Gurthang, Turin's sword. Frankly, I'm not fond of anything connected to Turin. And for those who don't know who Turin is, he has the most frustrating and depressing chapter in the Silmarillion. Anyway, we'll see.

He also thinks the figure in armour with a gold and silver sword is Galadriel, because her hair is described as a mix of gold and silver. Fits that it'd be a signature weapon. Furthermore, the horsehead sword might belong to a Numenorean cavalry officer.

[MissLucas]

If that's freaking Anglachel/Gurthang we're back in the First Age 🤷‍♀️ Turin's tale was depressing AF but it's actually one of the few favorites of mine from the Sil.