The Lord Of The Rings TV Show Has Cast Its First Actor

As a huge Lord of the Rings nerd I have a lot of scepticism around the television series being adapted by Amazon, but details have been thin on the ground regarding the upcoming show and so I’m perfectly happy to pretend it’s not happening.

However, it looks like the project is still going full steam ahead, as Variety has reported that the show has now cast its first series regular.

Credit: New Line Cinema

Australian actress Markella Kavenagh is said to be on board for the project, and it’s believed that she’ll be playing a character named Tyra, which isn’t the most Middle Earth-like name I’ve ever heard…

We might have another Tauriel disaster on our hands here (sorry, Evangeline Lilly) but I’m trying to remain cautiously optimistic.

Deadline reports that Amazon is looking for talent from all around the world for the series, which hopefully means the show will end up with a diverse cast who can thoroughly represent all the different races of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.

Showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay have been enlisted for the LOTR project, but with no previous television credits, it’s going to be interesting to see what they bring to the table.

Credit: New Line Cinema

The new Lord of the Rings show is set to cost upwards of 1 billion USD – though what exactly this billion pays for isn’t known yet. Most likely it’s at least one season, which, assuming that there’s 20 or so episodes to it, would mean that each episode would cost roughly 50 million USD. Yikes.

Amazon and Netflix were in a bidding war over the rights to the novels – they’ve changed hands several times since their actual release in 1954 and 1955. Amazon ended up paying a quarter of a billion dollars to the Tolkien estate, publisher HarperCollins and New Line Cinema.

The deal was made in 2017 and has some pretty specific instructions – filming had to commence within 2 years of the deal being made, and a minimum 5-year commitment means that we will see at least five seasons of the show.

Are you excited for a Lord of the Rings television series?

Featured Image Credit: New Line Cinema