Actor Will Poulter is joining actress Markella Kavenagh for Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings series which commences principal photography next year. Variety‘s Joe Otterson and Justin Kroll broke the news on Wednesday while details are being kept under wraps about the roles the two talents will play.
Kavenagh, whose credits include TV shows such as Romper Stomper and My Life Is Murder, was attached in July. J.A. Bayona (Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom) is reportedly helming the series with Bruce Richmond (Game of Thrones) and Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad), and writers Justin Doble (Stranger Things), and Jason Cahill (The Sopranos) all exec producing.
Poulter is one of the best and strongest actors there are today with credits that include Netflix’s Bandersnatch, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant and Kathryn Bigelow’s 2017 crime drama, Detroit. He is also prolifically known for his impressive performance as Gally in the first and third installments of the Wes Ball-directed Maze Runner trilogy.
Amazon is aiming for 20 episodes with a story that, as resident book dragon Christina Ortega Phillips elucidates, will take place in the Second Age where the series’ bears a number of possibilities in terms of story.
In the Second Age, there was a downfall of a kingdom, the Last Alliance formed, Rivendell was founded under Elrond, the dwarves were prospering, and the Rings were forged.
J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey will be consulting the series as well, which, for all intents and purposes, means that he gets veto power on any derivative changes to the original content in Tolkien’s books regarding the series.
I’m guessing this looks to be one of the strongest live-action cinematic adaptations by far for today’s streaming audiences. And this in the wake of having our minds mathematically blown by what Disney+ just teased this summer with The Mandalorian.
Alas, considering we’re dealing with a TV spin-off from an epic film franchise that just saw two trilogies which banked close to $6 billion dollars, so far, it’s nice to know this team isn’t going astray in its creative direction from the looks of it. And at twenty episodes too, so… yeah. Nice one, Will!