With an estimated budget of $1bn, 'The Rings of Power', is touted to be the most expensive television series ever made.
Ahead of the premiere of the new The Lord of the Rings series on Amazon Prime Video, makers have released the first teaser of the show.
Titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it will be set years before the LOTR trilogy. The eight-episode series arrives on Prime Video on September 2, with a new episode dropping every Friday.
The series follows the forging of the original rings of power that allowed the Dark Lord Sauron to spread darkness across Middle-earth.
According to Amazon, the show “brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared reemergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”
Amazon spent nearly $465m on the first season alone, in addition to $250m for the rights of the series from its original author JRR Tolkien.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings book series was named Amazon customers’ favourite book of the millennium in 1999. It has been translated into 40 languages and has sold more than 150m copies.
Its stage adaptations from director Peter Jackson have alone grossed nearly $6bn worldwide and won 17 Academy Awards.
