If Prime Video’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power works out, it will have captured the imagination of a third generation of Middle Earth fans. Based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, which in turn inspired a slew of hit films, the new series has been making noise for its hefty price tag more than anything else. But that’s only because the marketing drive began in earnest only a few weeks ago. We now have our first look at several characters from the show, as well as a tease of the plot, courtesy of a Vanity Fair spread.
Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne serve as the showrunners for the series, which has been reportedly granted a five-season production commitment from Prime Video. This will take production costs to around $1 billion. The goal, if it wasn’t already clear, is to fill a Game of Thrones-shaped void in the world of streaming, as Prime Video enters into direct competition with HBO Max over audience eyeballs. But McKay made it clear that The Rings of Power will be its own thing. Even though it isn’t based on any book that Tolkien wrote—instead, it draws from the detailed appendices that the author peppered his novels with—it isn’t going to target the same crowd that enjoyed Game of Thrones, a show infamous for gratuitous nudity and violence.
McKay said that with The Rings of Power, the goal is “to make a show for everyone, for kids who are 11, 12, and 13, even though sometimes they might have to pull the blanket up over their eyes if it’s a little too scary.” In his own words:
“We talked about the tone in Tolkien’s books. This is material that is sometimes scary—and sometimes very intense, sometimes quite political, sometimes quite sophisticated—but it’s also heartwarming and life-affirming and optimistic. It’s about friendship and it’s about brotherhood and underdogs overcoming great darkness.”
And this, in essence, is what made the Lord of the Rings movies so special, too. Directed by Peter Jackson, the trilogy was released between 2001 and 2003, winning numerous accolades and setting several box office records along the way. Jackson returned to direct a trilogy of prequel films, which extended Tolkien’s relatively slender The Hobbit book into three dense films.
The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before the events of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings movies, and “follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth." The eight-episode first season will debut on Prime Video on September 2.