Christopher Lee's Voice Will Be Used in THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM
Christopher Lee’s voice will be used in WB’s upcoming Middle-earth anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Lee played Saruman in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and also appeared in The Hobbit movies, but the character will return in The War of the Rohirrim, with Lee’s voice, which is unexpected but cool!
During an interview with The One Ring, writer and producer Philippa Boyens explained how they were able to use Lee's own voice for Saruman's part of the movie, and no, it wasn’t an AI thing.
Boyens explained that after receiving a letter from Lee before he passed and talking to his late widow, Birgit Kroencke, they decided to use an old recording from the archives.
She said: "[Kroecke agreed that] Sir Christopher would have wanted this, and so, we went into his records. I got to go back and hear his voice not just doing the lines but talking to us as we were recording them."
The recordings that were found came from one of Lee's later performances in The Hobbit franchise. Boyens explained:
"We based it on a line from The Hobbit, which is, 'Are you in need of assistance my lady,' or something — a version of that line. And we thought, okay, that's a line we can see how many takes he did of that.
“Can we use it? Can we find a new read on it and change it up a little bit? And our brilliant guys did that. But it is an authentic bit of Christoper Lee performance that it's based on that line."
As they were trying to pull this off, they did start looking for a replacement voice actor just in case it didn’t work out. But, they eventually came to the realization that there was no one who could fill in for Christopher Lee.
Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim tells the “fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan.”
“A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg—a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep.
“Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Héra, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.”
The film comes from award-winning filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series).
The voice cast includes Brian Cox as Helm Hammerhand the king of Rohan, Gaia Wise as Héra of Rohan, Luke Pasqualino as Wulf, Lorraine Ashbourne (Netflix’s Bridgerton), Yazdan Qafouri (I Came By), Benjamin Wainwright (BBC One’s World on Fire), Laurence Ubong Williams (Gateway), Shaun Dooley (Netflix’s The Witcher), Michael Wildman (Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), Jude Akuwudike (Beasts of No Nation), Bilal Hasna (BBC’s Sparks), and Janine Duvitski (ITV’s Benidorm).
The executive producers are Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Sam Register, Carolyn Blackwood and Toby Emmerich.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim be released theatrically worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures on December 13th, 2024, and internationally beginning December 11th, 2024.