Amazon Gathers LORD OF THE RINGS Series Fellowship

It’s been a year since Amazon announced feature writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to develop and write the company’s TV series adaptation based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings universe. Now they have not only announced the super talented crew behind it, but also released a teaser trailer to get fans revved up.

Payne and McKay released this statement:

This team is our Fellowship – assembled from around the world, all walking the road together to try and accomplish something far greater than any of us could on our own. We feel humbled and extremely lucky to be surrounded by such inspiring and talented women and men.

Joining Payne and McKay in the writers room are Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), who is also executive producing, Helen Shang (Hannibal), Justin Dohle (Stranger Things), Bryan Cogman (Game of Thrones), Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4), and Jason Cahill (The Sopranos), who also will be executive producing.

The catch of Cogman is huge for Amazon since he was the “third head of the dragon” for the HBO series along D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who had no TV writing credits before the series, just like Payne and McKay.

Lindsey Weber (10 Cloverfield Lane), Bruce Richmond (Game of Thrones), Gene Kelly (Boardwalk Empire), and Amazon’s former head of genre programming Sharon Tal Yguado will be joining Hutchison and Cahill as executive producers. Ron Ames (The Aviator) will produce.

J.A Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) will direct the first two episodes and also executive produce along with his partner Belén Atienza.

Now if the brains of the operation is not impressive enough, the creative design team is.

Kate Hawley (Edge of Tomorrow, Suicide Squad) is the costume designer. Oscar winner Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) is the production designer. Jason Smith (The Revenant, Super 8, The Avengers) is the visual effects supervisor.

Finally, returning to Middle Earth is Tolkien Scholar Tom Shippey, who was a Lord of the Rings movie illustrator. He is also a world-renowned expert on the worlds of Tolkien. He recently sat down with German language site TolkienGesellschaft to discuss what he could of the project (which wasn’t much) but did provide these details.

The show’s official Twitter account showed a map with two messages:

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie,” as well as “Welcome to the Second Age.” In the Tolkien mythology, the Second Age was the time in which the Rings of Power, including Sauron’s One Ring, came into existence.”

https://twitter.com/LOTRprimeTV/status/1155021989980983296

The map shown in the Amazon teaser is based on the Second Age of Tolkien. Since the Second Age was not presented in great detail in his work, this allows Amazon a lot of freedom in crafting new characters and stories, as long as they respect the chronology of events and keeps it all canonical. Shippey states that the Tolkien Estate does have veto power for the show. The estate still holds the rights to the First Age and the Third Age, which includes The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Shippey goes on:

Amazon has a relatively free hand when it comes to adding something, since, as I said, very few details are known about this time span. The Tolkien Estate will insist that the main shape of the Second Age is not altered. Sauron invades Eriador, is forced back by a Númenorean expedition, is returns to Númenor. There he corrupts the Númenoreans and seduces them to break the ban of the Valar. All this, the course of history, must remain the same. But you can add new characters and ask a lot of questions, like: What has Sauron done in the meantime? Where was he after Morgoth was defeated? Theoretically, Amazon can answer these questions by inventing the answers, since Tolkien did not describe it. But it must not contradict anything which Tolkien did say. That’s what Amazon has to watch out for. It must be canonical, it is impossible to change the boundaries which Tolkien has created, it is necessary to remain ‘Tolkienian.’

https://twitter.com/LOTRprimeTV/status/1155021441269547009

Amazon plans on twenty episodes for the first season with a debut date sometime in 2021.