New 'Lord Of The Rings' TV Series Confirmed For Five Seasons

Amazon has confirmed it will produce five seasons of its upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series.

Along with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, publishers HarperCollins, and New Line Cinema (which produced the award-winning trilogy of films), the studio is now working on the series.

There have been rumblings about which direction the show might take and according to a LOTR fan site, it could start with a young Aragon - played in the movies by Viggo Mortensen.

Viggo is unlikely to reprise his role as the Ranger of the North/future king of Gondor because of the age difference (he was supposed to be about 80 in the films given the strange nature of the aging process in Middle Earth) and it is not likely to focus on the 'War of the Ring' storyline.

via GIPHY

TheOneRing.net put out a series of tweets addressing what this means for Middle Earth - they said: "From the first press release, we know this so-called #LOTR series will NOT be a retelling of the events of the War of the Ring. #BeenThereDoneThat.

"Instead it will be Appendices based and cover a lot of time and history.

"This is the greatest advantage the show runners have: that so much of Tolkien's storytelling, even just in "Appendix A," covers a tremendous swath of time.

"Starting with a young Aragorn narrative allows connections to his Numenorean bloodline (and to the founding of #Gondor).

"We could, in flashbacks, learn essentials about the men of #Arnor, sister kingdom in the north to #Gondor, and how the surviving #Dunedain became a community of Rangers, seeking to protect the north from incursions of the Witch-king of Angmar."

If you haven't seen the movies or read the books then those words will essentially be gibberish, but if you have a semi-decent knowledge of Middle Earth then you'll know there is plenty of material to work with.

Amazon certainly has a big enough budget (estimated to be a casual $1 billion) to play with special effects and delve into the rich world that J R R Tolkien created.

Last year Amazon beat Netflix to the rights to make the series when they sealed a $250m deal with the estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien, Harper Collins, and New Line Cinema.

According to the small print of the deal, Amazon must be in production of the series within two years of the deal being made or the rights revert back to the original owners.

Featured Image Credit: New Line Cinema

Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, Interesting, Amazon, Lord Of The Rings

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

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