'The Lord of the Rings' Series Update: Amazon May Have Found Its Lead Character
Amazon is taking the most expensive risk it could ever take by committing to two seasons of a small screen series based the J.R.R. Tolkien series "Lord of the Rings."
For a television show that could potentially cost $1 billion, they are expected to have a solid plan in place to make it work, and it looks like they have, which is having a young Aragorn take the spotlight.
This is according to TheOneRing.Net, who credits its multiple sources at Amazon for their juicy information on the "Lord of the Rings" series.
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The show will be a prequel to the movies by Peter Jackson, who is rumored to be involved in the project to some degree. The abovementioned site claims that the series will be based on the appendices for "Lord of the Rings" and will "cover a lot of time and history."
"This is the greatest advantage the show runners have: that so much of Tolkien's storytelling, even just in 'Appendix A,' covers a tremendous swath of time," they wrote. "Starting with a young Aragorn narrative allows connections to his Numenorean bloodline," they added.
The site believes that the story of Aragorn will be the perfect way to start a "Lord of the Rings" TV series as it provides a perfect launching pad for many Middle-Earth stories.
With Aragorn front and center, fans will be able to learn more about the men of the kingdom of Arnor, and, as the abovementioned site envisions, explore the community of Dunedain and how it merged with the Rangers.
The "Lord of the Rings" series could also show how he came across the people he knew very well in the films like Arwen and even Gandalf, as well as his discovery of his secret ancestry, the armies he fought for and with, and everything in between.
It also makes sense for Aragorn to headline the ambitious "Lord of the Rings" series seeing that the project has always been imagined to give "Game of Thrones" a run for its money.
The HBO juggernaut, which will air its final season next year, centers on Jon Snow, who is very much like Aragorn in a lot of ways. Some would even say that the former might have been heavily inspired by the latter, although George R.R. Martin, the author behind the books on which the series is based and the creator of the character, has not confirmed that.
If the success of "Game of Thrones" and the status of Jon Snow as an icon and fan-favorite is anything to go by, Amazon cannot go wrong in having Aragorn be the protagonist of the "Lord of the Rings" series.
It is unknown at the moment what the format of the series will be. What's clear is that Amazon intends to make full use of the stories they acquired the license for that cost them $250 million.
The company is expected to set aside some for other projects, but the speculation is that the "Lord of the Rings" series might take the form of an anthology so that each season will focus on a different story or character and will be set in a different timeline.
