The buzz continues for the upcoming The Lord of the Rings series on Amazon Prime as they introduce their creative team via a Twitter video.
The team members come from all over the world, having worked on various TV and film productions such as Game of Thrones, Westworld, Breaking Bad, MCU’s Avengers, Star Wars, Star Trek and even Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy itself.
The Twitter video:
Director and producer roles
At first, JD Payne and Patrick McKay reportedly first came in as lead writers and now their official titles are showrunners.
As we already know, Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona is coming in as director for the first two episodes. Belén Atienza, Bruce Richmond, Gene Kelly and Lindsey Weber will be the executive producers for the series.
Bayona and Atienza have worked together on films like The Impossible, The Orphanage, A Monster Calls and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Whereas Richmond and Kelly did the HBO series Westworld. Richmond also executive produced Game of Thrones and The Leftovers while Kelly did for Boardwalk Empire and The Pacific. Weber worked on 10 Cloverfield Lane and Star Trek Beyond.
The video also introduced Ron Ames as the series co-producer. Ames brings in his experience from The Aviator, The Departed, Star Trek Into Darkness and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
The writing team
The writing team has expanded with Gennifer Hutchinson (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad), Helen Shang (13 Reasons Why, Hannibal), Jason Cahill (Halt and Catch Fire, The Sopranos, ER), Justin Doble (Stranger Things, Fringe), Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4), Bryan Cogman (Game of Thrones) and writing consultant Glenise Mullins.
Designers
Coming onboard as costume designer is Kate Hawley (Crimson Peak, Edge of Tomorrow, Suicide Squad).
Academy Award winner Rick Heinreichs has signed on as production designer. Heinreichs’ resume includes Sleepy Hollow, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Art and visual effects
Possibly the biggest deal here is John Howe. Howe was the chief conceptual designers for Peter Jackson’s LOTR film trilogy. Now LOTR movie fans can rejoice at Howe returning as the illustrator and concept artist for the Amazon Prime series.
Another Academy Award winner Jason Smith joins the team as the visual effects supervisor. Smith was part of The Avengers, Super 8 and The Revenant.
Show consultant
One of the world’s leading academic scholars on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Tom Shippey, has been called upon to help with the series.
Credit to Getty Images
via digitalspy.com and i09.gizmodo.com
Casting
The series still has yet to name their main cast except Markella Kavenagh who was reportedly in talks to play a mystery character. Everything else is still kept under wraps while keeping LOTR fans on the edge of our seats, waiting for the next show update.
Well played, Amazon! Nonetheless, it’s still exciting to get news about the upcoming series that can’t come any faster.
A familiar face from the LOTR trilogy, Orlando Bloom, is currently part of another Amazon Prime series called Carnival Row with Cara Delevingne. Bloom played Legolas Greenleaf in the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy. When asked about possibly reprising his iconic role as the warrior elf prince, IGN reported that Bloom admitted that he’s done all he could do with it.
“I like to think of myself as ageless, but I don’t know where I would fit in that world. If you’re saying as Legolas, they probably have a 19-year-old kid who’s ready to go,” he said.
Seeing Bloom appearing in The Hobbit films as Legolas was such a joy, and I’m sure fans would love it if he does the same somehow in Amazon’s LOTR series. But it would be hard to pinpoint his age during the time period the series is set in as Tolkien never specified his birthdate. There are many references that point to him being born sometime during the Third Age as there’s no record of him in the Second Age.
However, in the LOTR books, he claimed to be very old and often referred to his travelling companions as “children”. So who knows? Whichever way, I would be thrilled to see Bloom be a part of Amazon’s LOTR series as Legolas Greenleaf.
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