Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens Talk Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series

Amazon is hard at work on their upcoming Lord of the Rings television series(eseseses), and filmmaker Peter Jackson along with screenwriter Philippa Boyens have some thoughts about the project.

Jackson and Boyens recently spoke with Fandom while on the press tour for Mortal Engines, and the subject of LoTR at Amazon came up.

Jackson said:

“It’s interesting, I would hope to just be able to go into a Tolkien story and enjoy it like an audience member, which I’ve never been able to do. It’s one of the things I’ve missed out on, as people have enjoyed the movies we’ve made but I haven’t enjoyed them because I’ve made them.

So even though we made the films that we wanted to see, you can’t see them properly, you can’t clear your head. So the thing that I am hoping is, if the series gets made, that I can just sit back and watch some Tolkien that I haven’t been part of… if I don’t get involved with it. So that’s what I’m looking forward to.

Well, we spent quite a bit of time… I think the extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings films are over 12 hours, so our three movies are about the length of a series. So we didn’t stint, we didn’t hold back. We had a decent length.”

Boyens continued:

“I think it’s going to be a great venture. There’s a lot of story left to be told. It’ll be interesting to see how they want to tell it.”

And about casting Young Aragorn?

Jackson said:

“It’ll be interesting to see what they do with casting because I know that they, from what I understand, want to try to have a series and a world where it sort of fits with the films; they want to keep the designs. So I guess they’ll just have to find an actor who’s … young Aragorn is hesitant, he hasn’t the confidence of being a king yet, which is obviously the story of The Lord of the Rings — how he becomes the king. And he lives in Rivendell most of the time [in this new series] so…”

Boyens added:

“It depends on which part of the story you’re telling. If you’re telling [the story of Aragorn] hunting Gollum, you’re getting closer to the [Aragorn in Lord of the Rings]. You need someone with some range there because he’s probably going to have to start young and then move towards the Aragorn we know. So you need a phenomenal actor. Big shoes to fill…”

The drop of information there being that this young Aragorn will be spending his time in Rivendale, so perhaps, as we surmised, we’ll be getting Arwen as well.

We’ll let you know when we hear more about Amazon’s Lord of The Rings series, and when we can expect to see it on the streaming service.

Mortal Engines opens in theaters on December 14th 2018.