According to the director of The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power, the upcoming Prime Video series is unlike anything audiences have seen before.
In an interview with Empire, series director J.A. Bayona said that the upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel series cannot even be considered television. "The Rings Of Power is not television," Bayona said. "It's a new form we're creating here."
In a recent interview, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay shared a similar sentiment as the show's director and explained how the upcoming prequel series will set itself apart from Peter Jackson's original Lord of the Rings film trilogy. In particular, The Rings of Power will have more action sequences than "any television or streaming show we've ever seen."
"The siege at Helm's Deep is so iconic and amazing that it was like, 'What's a different thing that we can do that still feels like Middle-earth but is unique for this story?'" Payne said. McKay added, "The show has a lot of action in it -- more so than any television or streaming show that we've seen. Every episode has set pieces, creatures, battles and white-knuckle fights to the death. But instead of having 10,000 Orcs fighting 10,000 men, what's it like to have one Orc in your face, in your kitchen? What's it like trying to kill an Orc when you've never killed an Orc before?"
Based on the characters and world built by author JRR Tolkein, The Rings of Power features an impressive cast, including original characters, the silvan elf Arondir played by Ismael Cruz Cordova, Nazanin Boniadi's human healer Bronwyn, the dwarven princess Disa played by Sophia Nomvete, the elven smith Celebrimbor played by Charles Edwards and the human Halbrand, played by Charlie Vickers. Megan Richards, Markella Kavenagh and Sir Lenny Henry, all portray Hobbit ancestors known as harfoots. Among these original characters are some familiar faces to the Lord of the Rings mythos previously portrayed by Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Harry Sinclair in Peter Jackson's film trilogy. Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo and Maxim Baldry will portray younger versions of Galadriel, Elrond and Isildur, respectively.
The Rings of Power, which is intended to be a 50-hour, five-season series, will take place during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Prime Video's sweeping, big-budget fantasy series began filming in Feb. 2020 but paused for several months before resuming in September that same year. Season 1 wrapped filming in early August 2021, with the series moving from New Zealand to the UK for filming on Season 2.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere on Prime Video on Sept. 2, 2022.
Source: Empire