LOTR TV Show: "This Isn't The Middle-earth You Remember," Artist Says
Amazon's long-awaited Lord of the Rings TV series, The Rings of Power, premieres in September. While it is connected to the wider fantasy world of Middle-earth, it will stand apart from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, according to concept artist John Howe.
Howe, who also worked on Jackson's Middle-earth films, told Empire, «This isn't the Middle-earth you remember.»
The Rings of Power takes place in the Second Age, which is thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It will tell a story involving the forging of the rings and Sauron's rise, among other things, and its world will look and feel very alive, Howe teased.
«This is a world that's very vibrant. The elves are not hidden away in Mirkwood or lingering in Rivendell. They're busy constructing kingdoms. The dwarven kingdom of Moria is not an abandoned mine and the Grey Havens is not yet an abandoned city,» Howe said. «I loved having the opportunity to explore that unseen history.»
What's more, Howe mentioned that The Rings of Power will introduce viewers to the oceans of Middle-earth, which were not explored all that much in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.
«We're finally sailing on the oceans of Middle-earth,» Howe said. «They're daunting and enterprising and are almost colonizing the world. They were a lot of fun to imagine. It's something neither Lord Of The Rings nor Hobbit movies went anywhere near.»
The Rings of Power premieres September 2 on Prime Video. Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, said the trailer for The Rings of Power gave him «chills.»
Season 2 is already in the works, and in a big shift, production is leaving New Zealand and will
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