Tom Shippey Says LORD OF THE RINGS Should Have 20 Episodes in Season 1
We’re still learning a lot about Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings series, and now we know how many episodes to expect in the first season alone. Tom Shippey is an expert on J. R. R. Tolkein’s work and is consulting on the series.
Well, he recently gave an interview with Deutsche Tolkein where it was revealed that the first season is planned to be twenty episodes. That is extremely long for a streaming service show. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised as Lord of the Rings is constantly dragging things out to be much longer than most other projects in the same medium.
The creative team for the series includes executive producers Lindsey Weber (10 Cloverfield Lane), Bruce Richmond (Game of Thrones), Gene Kelly (Boardwalk Empire), and Amazon’s former head of genre programming Sharon Tal Yguado.
They are joined by writer and executive producer Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad); writer and executive producer Jason Cahill (The Sopranos); writer and executive producer Justin Doble (Stranger Things); consulting producers Bryan Cogman (Game of Thrones) and Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4); producer Ron Ames (The Aviator); writer and co-producer Helen Shang (Hannibal); and writing consultant Glenise Mullins.
It was also announced that project was bringing on costume designer Kate Hawley (Suicide Squad); production designer Rick Heinrichs (Star Wars: The Last Jedi); visual effects supervisor Jason Smith (The Revenant); Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey; and illustrator and concept artist John Howe.
Star Trek 4 writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay will serve as the showrunners and director J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, A Monster Calls, The Orphanage) will direct the first two episodes and executive produce along with his partner Belén Atienza. It was also recently reported that the first actor cast in the series was Markella Kavenagh.
Payne and McKay had this to say in a statement:
“This team is our Fellowship – assembled from around the world, all walking the road together to try and accomplish something far greater than any of us could on our own. We feel humbled and extremely lucky to be surrounded by such inspiring and talented women and men.”
This certainly is a great team of talent and fans are excited to see what they will bring us. Not much is known about the series, but we do know it will involve new stories preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Rings.