Amazon Lord of the Rings show gets 2024 premiere date, first image

Amazon’s original Lord of the Rings series premieres Sept. 2, 2024, Amazon Studios announced on Monday. The company said filming of the first season just wrapped up in New Zealand.

The series, which does not yet have a title, will cover Middle-earth’s Second Age, Amazon said in Monday’s statement: “Beginning in a time of relative peace, thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.”

Amazon announced in late 2017 that it was producing an original series based on Tolkien’s fantasy franchise, in conjunction with book publisher HarperCollins, the Tolkien Estate and Trust, and New Line Cinema, the distributor of the 2001-2003 trilogy directed by Peter Jackson.

Charlotte Brändström, who has directed episodes of The Witcher and Outlander, is aboard as this series’ director. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are the showrunners and executive producers.

Actors appearing in the ensemble cast include: 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.

The Hollywood Reporter, in April, reported that the first season of the show will cost $465 million to produce, on top of the $250 million the company spent on the rights to the franchise. That would make this the most expensive television production, ever, by a wide margin. By comparison, the last season of HBO’s Game of Thrones cost $90 million, and Disney spent about $100 million on the first year of The Mandalorian.