‘Lord of the Rings’ Amazon Prime Show Sets Premiere Date, Unveils First Image
The Lord of the Rings show has finally announced its premiere date and released the first official picture of the series.
According to Deadline, the series wrapped shooting today in New Zealand, and the studio celebrated it announcing that the show will debut on September 2, 2022. So we have thirteen months of waiting for the premiere of the most expensive show ever made. This is longer than what sources told The Hollywood Reporter a few weeks ago — they said in an article that they were hearing the show would drop early next year, with some executives hoping for a late 2021 release. It began filming in early 2020.
Estimates posted by The Hollywood Reporter a couple of months ago set the budget for the first season alone at over $400 million, which does not even include the $250 million Amazon paid for the rights, or the second season which was greenlit earlier this year.
Amazon has stayed quiet on giving any context to the first picture they’ve released. We don’t know where in Middle-earth it takes place, but given the bucolic lighting and cinematography, as well as the two trees in the background, we could be looking at the first-ever live-action picture of Valinor, the Middle-earth heaven where the elves decide to move during the events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which takes place in the Third Age.
The show, however, takes place during the Second Age, although we will still have familiar characters like Galadriel and Elrond. It is supposed to run for five seasons at least, and some fans speculate it will end on the final battle that kicks off Peter Jackson’s trilogy.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema have put in development an animated film focusing on the riders of Rohan. That project will be part of Jackson’s Middle-earth cinematic canon and serve as a prequel of sorts for the famous horse-riding warriors, but little more is known at this point.
Amazon Prime will stream weekly the show’s hour-long episodes on ∼240 countries next year, and we’ll be here to talk about it.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
