Amazon is making a play for a Game of Thrones-sized hit with a billion-dollar Lord of the Rings series. Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, isn’t involved, but the series will center on a character from his films: Young Aragorn, not to be confused with the Young Pope or the Young Dumblepope. There’s been no casting information about who will play the future King of Gondor and Ranger of the North, but the actor who portrayed Aragorn in the big-screen trilogy, Viggo Mortensen, has some advice for whoever it ends up being.
“I would say, not only read the book, you know, very thoroughly, that giant book of Lord of the Rings, but you could read some of the Nordic sagas,” the Green Book star told Collider. “You’ll get some clues there as to where Tolkien got his information. Like, Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, and the Volsunga saga. Read that.”
The part about buying the books from Amazon was left unspoken.
Mortensen added that “there’s always something that you can draw on. I had read or been read to as a kid, stories about Vikings and Nordic sagas and stuff, and there was something there that was familiar, but it was still – you know, fortunately when I started doing that shoot it was physical stuff, not dialogue. So it was like sword fighting, so I could get my feet wet with that before I actually had to start speaking.” He’s glad he agreed to play Aragorn, and that it “opened a lot of doors” for him (A History of Violence and Eastern Promises came after Return of the King), but “it’s not ideal.” Fighting in a bathhouse naked, though…
A day may come when Mortensen has more advice. But it is not this day.
(Via Collider)