Washington: The studio New Line Cinema, which is behind the Oscar-winning ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and ‘The Hobbit’, is teaming up with Warner Bros., to make the animation for the original anime movie ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’.
According to Variety, veteran anime filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama, who directed Netflix’s ‘Ultraman’ anime series, will direct the film from a screenplay by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews. Joseph Chou is producing the forthcoming project.
The stand-alone feature will describe the bloody story behind Helm’s Deep, the fortress portrayed 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 continued and costly war. As the filmmaking team is new to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movie franchise, the project is expected to be related to director Peter Jackson’s six Middle Earth films based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Philippa Boyens, who won an Oscar for the screenplay for ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’, is consulting on the project, which will also attract its aesthetic and narrative inspiration from the ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. However, ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ is not related to Amazon’s gargantuan ‘The Lord of the Rings’ series that is deep into production in New Zealand. That project is produced in the Second Age of Middle Earth, millennia before the events of the feature films; Helm Hammerhand’s reign, by contrast, unfolded roughly 260 years before the ‘LOTR’ movies.
Along with Amazon’s series looming, New Line and Warner Animation are fast-tracking their story, with animation at Sola Entertainment and voice casting already initiated. The six Middle Earth features have earned over USD 5.8 billion worldwide for Warner Bros., and it would appear the studio is not content ceding its claim to Tolkien’s creative territory to Amazon.
The project will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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