Amazon's Lord of the Rings show has an official title: The Rings of Power
Amazon Prime Video is quite ready for another adventure.
On Tuesday morning, just around the time of second breakfast, Amazon unveiled the title for its long-awaited series set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. A cryptic title reveal video shows liquid silver being forged into letters, letters that eventually cool to reveal the show's official name: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
On one hand, the title doesn't seem to tell us much that we didn't already know: The upcoming show is already confirmed to take place during Tolkien's Second Age, a vast period of Middle-earth history set thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. But the title specifically highlights one Second Age event in particular: when notorious baddie Sauron first rose to power, forging the 20 rings he used to wrest control over Middle-earth.
"This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien's other classics," showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay said in a statement. "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. Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen 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."
Amazon Studios
In the video, an unidentified voice gives a little more context to how those rings were forged, reading one of Tolkien's most famous verses:
"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."
Amazon hasn't revealed exactly who's speaking, but it sure sounds like the voice of Morfydd Clark, who's been confirmed to play the Lady Galadriel. If so, it's a nice nod to Peter Jackson's trilogy: Jackson kicked off his take on The Lord of the Rings with a prologue at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, narrated by Cate Blanchett's Galadriel. That prologue covered the same period of Second Age history, as Sauron forged the 20 rings — including the all-powerful One Ring — and attempted to conquer Middle-earth.
In addition to Clark, the series' announced cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, 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.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere Sept. 2 on Amazon, with new episodes dropping each week. Whither then? We cannot say.
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