Will Poulter Cast in Amazon's LORD OF THE RINGS Series
Amazon has cast Will Poulter (Midsommar, The Maze Runner) as one of the lead characters in their upcoming Lord of the Rings series. There are absolutely no details to share on who Poulter will be playing in the series, but with his look, I’d have to guess he’s playing a Hobbit or an Elf.
He joins the previously cast Markella Kavenagh in the series. Poulter has proved himself to be a solid actor and landing an epic series like this is a pretty sweet gig! The series will explore new storylines that are set in Middle Earth preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
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 are executive producers on the series. 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.
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.
We don’t know much about the series, but the show’s official Twitter account sent out an image of a map teasing the setting along with two messages: “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie,” as well as “Welcome to the Second Age.”
In the Tolkien mythology, the Second Age was the time in which the Rings of Power, including Sauron’s One Ring, came into existence. It was also teases that the film could involve the island of Numenor.
Numenor was a kingdom of men established on an island brought up out of the sea by the Valar in the early Second Age after the final ruin of Beleriand, and was where the Númenoreans originated from. It was a “gift to Men. It was also called Elenna or the Isle of Elenna ("Starwards") because the Dúnedain were led to it by the star of Eärendil, and because the island was in the shape of a five-pointed star.”
The men of Numenor lived in peace, and they were forbidden by the Valar “from sailing so far westward that Númenor was no longer visible, for fear that they would come upon the Undying Lands, to which men could not come.”
They ended up resenting Valar and their ban, and the Númenóreans wanted to break free and explore the world and wanted everlasting life. “They tried to compensate this by going eastward and colonizing large parts of Middle-earth, first in a friendly way, but later as tyrants. Soon the Númenóreans came to rule a great but terrorizing maritime empire that had no rival, but a few (the Faithful) remained loyal to the Valar and friendly to the elves.”
They ended up taking over sections of Middle Earth, and with Sauron on the rise, Numenor would meet its tragic downfall down the line, but its survivors would go on to create the kingdoms of Armor and Gondor.
Source: Variety