Tag: The Second Age

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‘Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’: The Second Age of Middle-Earth Revealed With Amazon Series First-Look Trailer

After an extensive in-depth look at Amazon’s billion-dollar series set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic fantasy world of Middle-Earth with Vanity Fair’s preview, the streaming giant has launched the first-look footage with a trailer for Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power.

The show takes place in the Second Age, many many years before the Peter Jackson films that took place in the Third Age. Established characters in the show include Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), Isildur (Maxim Baldry), and The Dark Lord Sauron is expected to be the looming threat as he is the “Lord” referred to in the title.

Sauron with the help of Elf smith Celebrimbor created and gifted the Rings of Power.

Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series 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 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.

The Rings of Power will debut on September 2nd.

Posted on in Television News

Amazon’s ‘Lord of The Rings’ Series Has Just Resumed Filming In New Zealand – ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Begins Filming On Wednesday

Deadline has word that the New Zealand production of Amazon’s Lord of The Rings series has resumed and Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop heading towards a start on September 30th, both series had been shooting in Auckland.

Filming has just resumed in New Zealand on Amazon’s sprawling The Lord Of The Rings TV series, an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels, I have learned. Production on Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is slated to restart on Wednesday, Sept. 30, in the island country where Netflix’s Sweet Tooth has been shooting since Sept. 14, sources said. The three shows were among handful of Hollywood TV series and movies that were granted border exemptions by the New Zealand government in July to film in the country.

The Lord of The Rings series will take place during The Second Age of Middle-Earth, which means this will be thousands of years before the events of two feature film trilogies that took place in The Third Age. It’s cast includes Robert Aramayo, Markella Kavenagh, Morfydd Clark, Ema Horvath, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, and Joseph Mawle.

The Second Age sees the rise of Sauron, who has replaced Melkor aka Morgoth as the new Dark Lord after Morgoth is banished to the void. During this time Sauron creates the rings of power and uses them to destroy multiple ancient kingdoms leading to the battle scene in the prologue sequence from Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring.

It’ll be interesting to see if we’ll end up seeing fair-faced version of Sauron and the origin of The Witch King, who might have been a Numenorean king of the ancient island kingdom. A key location that is going to be explored in the series.

Sadly, Amazon is tackling The Second Age because they don’t have access to The First Age, which is mostly covered in The Silmarillion and the History of Middle-Earth. This could lead to Amazon having to come up with a lot of that mythology on their own and filling blanks with the help of the Tolkien Estate. This series will likely be familiar to fans but will also likely be it’s own thing.

We are hearing they’ll be adding many familiar Middle-Earth creatures but remains to be seen if they’ll attempt to make the production design match the Peter Jackson films.

Deadline adding that writers have used the production pause to start writing Season 2 (previously confirmed) scripts which isn’t shocking it’s being planned as getting five seasons.

The writing team of the series, led by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, used the time to map out and write Season 2 scripts.

Netflix had begun shooting the live-action Cowboy Bebop last fall and after a knee injury suffered by lead actor John Cho led to a hiatus in Auckland before the COVID-19 impacted global production. Resuming this week sounds is the first step for them to finally get this completed after a year of hiccups.

COWBOY BEOP – Based on the worldwide phenomenon from Sunrise Inc., Cowboy Bebop is the jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine and Radical Ed: a rag-tag crew of bounty hunters on the run from their pasts as they hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. They’ll even save the world…for the right price.

This news comes after James Cameron recently confirmed to Arnold Schwarzenegger that they’ve completed live-action filming on Avatar 2 and is 95% completed on Avatar 3. Those two massive sequels had been shooting at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Television News

Hugo Weaving Has Zero Interest In Joining Amazon’s ‘Lord of The Rings’ Series

It was recently revealed by Aussie actor Hugo Weaving that he was keen on returning to the Agent Smith role for Lana Wachowski’s Matrix 4, but the director ultimately decided against it. 

However, when it comes to being asked to reprise the role of Elrond in future Middle-Earth projects such as Amazon’s Lord of The Rings series set in during the Second Age, he has no interest according to comments made to Variety. 

WEAVING: “Matrix might have happened. But Lord of the Rings, no, I would never — I’m not interested in that at all. Look, I loved being in New Zealand with all those great people, and it was like going back to a family but actually, to be honest, I think everyone had more than enough of it.”

“They have to be something really interesting, with a different twist to make me really keen to do it.”

“I’m not saying ‘no’ [to those kinds of tentpole films] because I’m sort of open to anything,” he says. “But I suppose my interests have always lay with this country and trying to find really interesting projects out here. That’s my primary focus.”

His experience working on the Hobbit films and their outcome might have something to do with his stance. 

There had been some unconfirmed fan rumblings of his character returning for the Amazon series, but Hugo won’t be involved. 

SOURCE: VARIETY