Middle Earth keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the latest project in the Lord of the Rings universe is apparently a feature-length anime. An animated Lord of the Rings film is reportedly coming from New Line Cinema and Warner Animation, who have roughly $5.8 billion reasons to keep expanding the blockbuster film series with new stories from the J.R.R. Tolkien universe.
According to Variety, The War of the Rohirrim anime has some serious backing lined up and will feature a story Rings fans are eager to see play out on the silver screen. According to the report, voice casting is already underway and we already know the feature will tackle some important lore.
The stand-alone feature will depict the bloody saga behind Helm’s Deep, the fortress depicted in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” and the man in whose honor it’s named: Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan who spent much of his reign locked in a prolonged and costly war.
Veteran anime filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama, who helmed Netflix’s “Ultraman” anime series, will direct the film from a screenplay by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (“The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance”). Joseph Chou (the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” TV series) is producing.
It’s all part of the ever-expanding Rings universe, which is starting to include projects on a variety of networks and extending beyond movies. As Variety’s reporting indicates, the anime film will directly tie into the more traditional Lord of the Rings movies from Peter Jackson, which includes the original trilogy and the number of Hobbit-related projects. That includes Philippa Boyens, who penned the Oscar-winning Return of the King screenplay, consulting on the anime project. The Amazon LOTR series, however, will apparently not be directly tied to this project.
That’s probably because, well, the series is set many, many years before the original trilogy’s events in Middle Earth. Still with us? Well, it’ll all make a bit more sense when the series and this film are actually released. But there’s certainly a lot to look forward to here.
[via Variety]
