After Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy, and the first season of the Amazon series, audiences tend to consider New Zealand to be the home of Middle-Earth, however, it seems like this tradition is coming to an end.
According to Collider, Amazon has announced that the second season of its upcoming The Lord of the Rings series will be filmed in the United Kingdom instead of New Zealand as the studio is working toward expanding its reach in Europe.
“We want to thank the people and the government of New Zealand for their hospitality and dedication and for providing The Lord of the Rings series with an incredible place to begin this epic journey. We are grateful to the New Zealand Film Commission, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Tourism New Zealand, Auckland Unlimited, and others for their tremendous collaboration that supported the New Zealand film sector and the local economy during the production of Season One,” said V.P. and co-head of TV at Amazon Studios, Vernon Sanders.
Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings is set to be directed by Charlotte Brändström (The Witcher, Jupiter’s Legacy), who will helm two episodes, J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), who will direct the first two episodes and British Chinese director Wayne Che Yip who will helm four episodes, while JD Payne and Patrick McKay serve as showrunners. The series is set to debut on September 2nd 2022 on Amazon Prime Video with episodes airing weekly.
Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series 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 J.R.R. 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 re-emergence 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.
Lord of the Rings will star Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Daniel Weyman, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Maxim Baldry, Ian Blackburn, Kip Chapman, Anthony Crum, Maxine Cunliffe, Trystan Gravelle, Lenny Henry, Thusitha Jayasundera, Fabian McCallum, Simon Merrells, Geoff Morrell, Peter Mullan, Lloyd Owen, Augustus Prew, Peter Tait, Alex Tarrant, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, and Sara Zwangobani.
