If there’s one con to rule them all this year, it’s San Diego Comic-Con. Prime Video is bringing The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to SDCC in July, with a panel featuring showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay and stars taking the stage at the convention’s legendary Hall H.
The series will feature 22 stars and multiple storylines that range from deep within the dwarven mines of the Misty Mountains to the high politics of the elven kingdom of Lindon. These story threads eventually center around the incident that made the trilogy a fantasy classic.
While speaking with Empire, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay revealed that they have everything planned out for the Prime Video series, right down to the very last shot.
“We even know what our final shot of the last episode is going to be,” JD Payne teased. “The rights that Amazon bought were for a 50-hour show. They knew from the beginning that was the size of the canvas – this was a big story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There are things in the first season that don’t pay off until Season 5.” All five seasons of The Rings of Power are set thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The series will chronicle the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of Sauron, the fall of Númenor, and the last alliance between Elves and Men. The Rings of Power will draw from J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, but Payne explains it was like “Tolkien put some stars in the sky and let us make out the constellations.” Although the series will introduce new characters and ideas, Patrick McKay knew it all had to fit into what Tolkien created.
“The pressure would drive us insane if we didn’t feel like there was a story here that didn’t come from us. It comes from a bigger place. It came from Tolkien, and we’re just the stewards of it. We trust those ideas so deeply because they’re not ours. We’re custodians, at best.”
Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Weyman, and Sara Zwangobani headline the cast.
The upcoming presentation will undoubtedly provide more details about the series, which fans have anticipated since it was announced. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is by far Prime Video’s most ambitious project to date, and I suspect they’ll go all out for this year’s exciting presentation.
Do you plan to attend San Diego Comic-Con? Will you check out the LOTR panel if you have the chance? Let us know in the comments section below.