Amazon extends ‘Lord Of The Rings’ into second season

Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King

Amazon has renewed its mega-budget TV adaptation of Lord Of The Rings, with the first season still in pre-production.

The show is in being filmed in New Zealand and is being written by JD Payne and Patrick McCay. Amazon Studios is producing in cooperation with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, publishers HarperCollins and Warner Bros. outfit New Line Cinema.

Details of the series, which has Payne and Bayona attached as showrunners, have been kept tightly under wraps to date although the story will focus on new storylines that precede The Fellowship Of The Ring, the first novel from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

The show was first unveiled in 2017 after Amazon acquired global rights to Tolkien’s novels for $250m, with a multi-season order that reportedly runs to five seasons. The second season had not been formally greenlit, however, while a potential spin-off series was also included as part of the original deal.

Actors Markella Kavenagh, Will Poulter and Joseph Mawle, are set to star, while exec producers include Lindsey Weber, Bruce Richmond, Gene Kelly, and Sharon Tal Yguado, Amazon’s former head of genre programming.

Producers had been considering filming the series in Scotland but eventually plumped for New Zealand, where the Peter Jackson movies were filmed.

News of the renewal was first reported by Deadline.