What does a half-billion-dollar TV show look like?
Amazon is revealing the answer with its lavish first teaser trailer for the highly anticipated The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series (below).
The show is considered the most expensive TV series ever made, with the first season costing $465 million — though that figure contains considerable one-time startup costs, such as securing the rights to the material from J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate, building sets, costumes, props, etc. The show is planned to span 50 hours and five seasons.
The Rings of Power follows the forging of the original rings of power during the Second Age that allowed the Dark Lord Sauron to spread evil across Middle-earth. It’s set thousands of years before the events in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Amid shots of scenic spectacle (so much waterfall), the trailer gives glimpses of young versions of two familiar elven characters from Jackson’s movies — Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) — as well as new characters for the series such as a dwarven princess named Disa (Sophia Nomvete) and an elf named Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova).
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Two types of LOTR characters have been largely restricted from the series: wizards and hobbits, “who weren’t major players in the Second Age,” according to a recent Vanity Fair story on the production. The Rings of Power will still have hobbits, of a sort, by including hobbit ancestors called harfoots, but they will have a peripheral story “in the margins of the bigger quests.”
The producers also recently addressed the backlash from some fans about the show being far more diverse than Jackson’s films.
According to Amazon, the show “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 reemergence 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.”
The production was mainly filmed in New Zealand. Then last fall, it was announced production was moving to the U.K.
The ensemble cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Weyman and Sara Zwangobani.
The debut season of LOTR will premiere Friday, Sept. 2, on Prime Video and will air in 240 territories around the world. New episodes will be rolled out on a weekly basis.
