By Gwen Luga
Arise, warriors, for this alert is bigger than the beacons of Gondor! Amazon’s most ambitious project planned back in 2017 finally announces its release date, albeit next year, on September 2, 2022.
With an auspicious date picked to air the still unnamed but dearly beloved movie series, Amazon Studios also released its very first image that celebrates its wrapping up of filming in New Zealand.
The released image is confirmed to be from the very first episode, however fans from all over the world continue to gather their speculations and theories as the city shown can either be various locations from the Tolkien universe, namely the City of Valinor or the Western elven capital of Lindon. Featured also is a figure swathed in white, and what seems to be, in the far left, the two lost Trees of Valinor, which are the original sources of all light and beauty.
Back in 2017, Amazon Studios teased out this expensive project with a tweet reading, “Welcome to the Second Age,” coupled with a map of Númenor, hinting that this series portrays events that happen thousands of years before the timeline where Bilbo and Frodo Baggins went on to their big adventures.
TheOneRing.net laid out the synopsis of the billion-dollar project: “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.”
It reportedly costed around $465 million to produce only the first season alone, with JD Payne and Patrick McKay, who both worked for Star Trek: Beyond (2016), Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” and “Flash Gordon”, leading at the helm. They are also accompanied by JA Bayona, who worked on 2018 film “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”, Charlotte Brändström, from the series “The Witcher” and “Jupiter’s Legacy”, and Wayne Che Yip who worked on BBC’s “Doctor Who” and “Tatau”.
The series is being planned with a minimum of 5 seasons, with 8 to 10 episodes per season, but as this is going to be an Amazon Original, it may not quite have the same look as the LOTR movies by Peter Jackson.
With high expectations and excitement calling fandom-driven enthusiasts back into Tolkien’s series, Amazon picked no better a way to rule them all.
