Now we know where some of the $465 million budget went: To the village blacksmith, of course! Amazon Prime Video has announced the title for its upcoming Lord of the Rings series adaptation, and it did so by spelling out The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in molten metal cast into carved redwood (which, Amazon’s press materials assure us, was “sustainably sourced”). The announcement was made today in a video featuring lines from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Ring Verse”:
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
This is the verse that comes directly before the famous “One ring to rule them all” line, suggesting how the series will take place in the Second Age, preceding the events of the book and film trilogy. If you do the elf math, it looks like a whopping 20 rings that will be chronicled in the series.
“This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics. The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men,” said showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay in a statement. “Until now, audiences have only seen onscreen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many … and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.” And according to the teaser that premiered after the Super Bowl halftime show, the epic story will be depicted entirely in slo-mo action and sweeping vistas. The Rings of Power premieres on September 2 on Sauron’s Jeff Bezos’s own Mordor Amazon Prime Video.
This post has been edited throughout.
