AMAZON has unveiled the name of its new series set in the world of the Lord of the Rings.
Called “The Rings of Power”, the show is due to start streaming on September 2, 2022, according to the company founder Jeff Bezos.
A promotional video announcing the name of the show has also been released, showing rings being forged as a voice recounts famous lines from JRR Tolkien’s classic works.
Scotland had been a frontrunner in the race to host shooting for the first season of the Middle Earth fantasy show, with Edinburgh's Leith film studio to be a base of operations.
However, the uncertainty surrounding Brexit reportedly put the producers off shooting here. Instead they opted for New Zealand, where Peter Jackson’s film series was made.
There is hope that the second series will be shot in Scotland after it was announced that production would move to the UK. Such a move would be in line with Amazon’s “strategy of expanding its production footprint and investing in studio space”.
The first was reportedly the most expensive TV series ever made, with the budget said to have been around $465 million (£336m).
JD Payne and Patrick McKay serve as showrunners and executive producers on the series, while actors announced as being part of the ensemble cast include Nazanin Boniadi, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Sophia Nomvete and Lloyd Owen.
The drama will portray Tolkien's Second Age of Middle-earth's history, according to Amazon.
It is set thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings books and features the "long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle Earth".
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