The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime)

Brian in Mesa

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'Lord of the Rings' Amazon Series Casts Its Main Villain

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/lord-rings-amazon-series-casts-main-villain-1249174

Game of Thrones grad Joseph Mawle has joined the cast of the scripted drama project, sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter. Amazon declined comment.

Based on J.R.R. Tolkien's iconic fantasy novels, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay (Star Trek 4) serve as showrunners on the series that is set in Middle-Earth's Second Age, before the events of the author's primary trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

Mawle is believed to be playing a villain named Oren in the straight-to-series effort. He joins a cast that also includes Will Poulter (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) and Australian actress Markella Kavenagh.

J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) is set to direct the first two episodes and will executive produce along with his producing partner Belén Atienza. Writers Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad), Jason Cahill (The Sopranos) and Justin Doble (Stranger Things) are also EPs, as are Lindsey Weber, Bruce Richmond, Gene Kelly and former Amazon head of genre Sharon Tal Yguado.

Once production budgets, casting, writers, producers and visual effects are factored in, the total cost for the LOTR series could reach as high as $1 billion.
 

Dback Jon

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The eye-popping Lord of the Rings price tag almost certainly doesn’t reflect season one’s production cost alone. The rights to the Tolkien property cost an estimated $250 million. Plus there are considerable start-up costs when bringing Middle Earth to life – such as sets, costumes and props – that will be used throughout the series.
 

Covert Rain

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Amazon could have a megahit on it's hands if this is any good.
 

jf-08

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From the article:

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."
 

Stout

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As the creator isn't being an asshat and working on this prequel project and 1,000 other projects without actually finishing his MAIN project, I'm down for the prequel series ;)
 

Devilmaycare

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I'm actually really nervous over this show. LotR is my all time favorite going back well before the movies to the books. The show runners have pretty much no experience which is a concern. Then a lot of info coming from it hasn't sounded the greatest. It makes it sound like they're trying to make it Game of Thrones like. Hopefully they pull it off.
 

Cheesebeef

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I'm actually really nervous over this show. LotR is my all time favorite going back well before the movies to the books. The show runners have pretty much no experience which is a concern. Then a lot of info coming from it hasn't sounded the greatest. It makes it sound like they're trying to make it Game of Thrones like. Hopefully they pull it off.

who are the Showrunners?

I’m friends of friends with one one of the writers on the show. She’s a superstar who cut her teeth on Breaking Bad (started as Vince Gilligans asst and rose to Co-Executive Producer by the end of the run) and Better Call Saul (first season I think) before going on to do other things. If that’s the caliber writer up and down the staff, it gives me confidence they’ve got something good cooking.
 

Cheesebeef

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Wow... two feature writers who haven’t had a movie produced yet. That’s definitely taking a leap.

that said Weiss and Benihoff had never written TV (or even with each other!) before they were made showrunners for Thrones. Sure, it went off the rails after six seasons but before that, they steered a massively unruly beast with impressive skill.
 

Stout

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Wow... two feature writers who haven’t had a movie produced yet. That’s definitely taking a leap.

that said Weiss and Benihoff had never written TV (or even with each other!) before they were made showrunners for Thrones. Sure, it went off the rails after six seasons but before that, they steered a massively unruly beast with impressive skill.

Yeah, but they also made a hideously bad pilot (so it is told--it'll never see the light of day) that should have sunk the enterprise before it really started. They put it down to inexperience. How many rookies get a second chance at the same project when failing so badly?
 

UncleChris

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Is this series going to be a slog through the Silmarillion and immediately post? Gawd, I hope not.....
 

Cheesebeef

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Yeah, but they also made a hideously bad pilot (so it is told--it'll never see the light of day) that should have sunk the enterprise before it really started. They put it down to inexperience. How many rookies get a second chance at the same project when failing so badly?

not many, but who knows why that first pilot failed. I’ve seen many a good pilots destroyed by the network development process. But to get another crack at it is super rare... for ANYONE, much less TV novices.

that said Benioff at the time was one of the most sought after writers in the industry and I think Martin had final say in who could run the show so maybe he just really believed in those guys and HBO desperately wanted Thrones to work.
 

Devilmaycare

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Wow... two feature writers who haven’t had a movie produced yet. That’s definitely taking a leap.

that said Weiss and Benihoff had never written TV (or even with each other!) before they were made showrunners for Thrones. Sure, it went off the rails after six seasons but before that, they steered a massively unruly beast with impressive skill.

Benioff and Weiss are part of the reason I'm nervous over these too. HBO surrounded them with A+ talent which helped mask their shortcomings. They also greatly benefited from GRRM's writing, not only the story but, more importantly, his dialog. When they ran out of books they went off a cliff. They had the story outline too but couldn't write dialog or connect the dots of the outline to the levels of the books and early seasons.

It's good to hear about the caliber of the writer you know. One of the things I've been hoping for is that Amazon did like HBO did with B&W and surrounded the show runners with top flight talent.

that said Benioff at the time was one of the most sought after writers in the industry and I think Martin had final say in who could run the show so maybe he just really believed in those guys and HBO desperately wanted Thrones to work.

Still surprises me that Benioff was so hot at the time. My thought on him around then was "this is the guy that though it was a good idea to make Deadpool silent and sew his mouth shut." I have to question any writer who does that to the Merc with the Mouth.
 

Devilmaycare

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Is this series going to be a slog through the Silmarillion and immediately post? Gawd, I hope not.....

It is based on some of the material in the Silmarillion which isn't a problem if the writers are good. There's really good stories in it but the book isn't the best read since it isn't a novel like LotR or The Hobbit. It's more of a history book. So if you can take those stories and write good characters and dialog around them then you could have a really good show. That's why I'm nervous over the experience of the show runners. Hopefully they have the talent for it.

I really hope they can do it in the same tone and style as Tolkien too. Some of the rumor have had them going for it being more gritty and casting calls have had nudity requirements in it. I really don't want it to be Game of Thrones in Middle Earth. I want it to be Tolkien's Middle Earth. I love both franchises but they're two separate styles and shouldn't be mashed together.
 

Cheesebeef

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Benioff and Weiss are part of the reason I'm nervous over these too. HBO surrounded them with A+ talent which helped mask their shortcomings. They also greatly benefited from GRRM's writing, not only the story but, more importantly, his dialog. When they ran out of books they went off a cliff. They had the story outline too but couldn't write dialog or connect the dots of the outline to the levels of the books and early seasons.

It's good to hear about the caliber of the writer you know. One of the things I've been hoping for is that Amazon did like HBO did with B&W and surrounded the show runners with top flight talent.



Still surprises me that Benioff was so hot at the time. My thought on him around then was "this is the guy that though it was a good idea to make Deadpool silent and sew his mouth shut." I have to question any writer who does that to the Merc with the Mouth.

that was a FOX decision on Deadpool. Head of FOX at that time hated the entire X-Men series and pretty much destroyed it with his meddling after X2.
 

WaywardFan

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This is going to be so awful. They are getting ratioed to hell on Youtube.
 

WaywardFan

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It means different things depending on the platform. In the case of Youtube, it means the downvotes GREATLY outnumbered the upvotes. Like 100,000 likes to over 2 million downvotes in one specific video Amazon Prime put out. It's like that for every video they put out.

This series severely demolishes the lore and people are pissed.
 

Chaplin

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It means different things depending on the platform. In the case of Youtube, it means the downvotes GREATLY outnumbered the upvotes. Like 100,000 likes to over 2 million downvotes in one specific video Amazon Prime put out. It's like that for every video they put out.

This series severely demolishes the lore and people are pissed.
How do you know that? “Severely” is pretty strong language about something that very little is known about and isn’t even out yet.
 

WaywardFan

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There's actually a lot known about it, despite Amazon trying very hard to keep things under wraps because they know it's bad.

The most glaring example is pretty much everything Galadriel does in the first season of this tv series, she didn't actually do and is pretty much diametrically against who the character is, what the character does, and how the character acts.

There are many, many people online tracking and reporting on this with very detailed analysis.
 
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