Don’t Look For A Rivalry Between ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ & ‘House of Dragons’ [TCA]

SPOILER ALERT: This podcast contains details of the first two episodes of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which debuted Thursday night. For more on the epic series, watch Deadline’s Inside The Ring: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power after-show that launches Saturday. 

A new era of Middle-earth! The Rings of Power explores a totally different side of The Lord of the Rings — and fittingly, the cast is full of new faces.

The Rings Of Power showrunners have confirmed the show’s ending will remain faithful to J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material.Based on the appendices to the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, The Rings Of Power covers Middle-earth’s Second Age, from the rise of Sauron, the forging of the rings and the last alliance between Elves and Men.The show has been mapped out for five seasons by showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay, including an endpoint which won’t deviate from Tolkien’s original works.Asked by NME if they have an ending for the show, McKay said: “Yes, if you’re a fan of the lore or a fan of The Lord Of The Rings, then you know that the rings of power… it’s the rings which were scattered across Middle-earth through Elves, Dwarves and mortal Men as Tolkien called them.

 is back with a pared down cast, but double the drama for season 3. OG stars Whitney Rose, Jen Shah, Lisa Barlow, Heather Gay and Meredith Marks all return for this fresh batch of episodes, which largely focus on Jen's ongoing legal battle with the federal government — at least judging by the just-released trailer. In July, Jen changed her plea in her federal fraud case to guilty after professing her innocence for more than a year, including while filming this new season.

Caroline Framke Chief TV Critic Several years (and several hundreds of millions of dollars) after Amazon bought the TV rights to “The Lord of the Rings” from the J.R.R. Tolkien estate, the mammoth effort to boost Prime Video’s profile with the same kind of phenomenon HBO found in “Game of Thrones” is upon us — and it’s just as grand, if not as downright surreal, as the occasion calls for. Sure, “Game of Thrones” might have solidified a television format for fantasy epics. But George R.R. Martin’s novels simply wouldn’t exist without Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” and bringing these stories to episodic life requires not just all the considerable money Amazon can provide, but a certain amount of guts from the TV writers taking it on now, some 85 years after “The Hobbit” changed the game. 

“The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power.” Based on the appendices of the original trilogy, the series expands upon the original text to answer some of the crucial queries proposed by Tolkein. Questions like: what cost does war have on the young lives supplied to fight it? At what point is the individual greater than the community? How does one preserve their legacy? These eternal haunting questions search for answers amongst the resplendent beauty of New Zealand’s vast terrain, charming new characters and frightening paths to a country divided and at war. The series begins with a black screen and the words, “Nothing is evil in the beginning. And there was a time when the world was so young there had not yet been a sunrise.

global premiere last night — and thanked the showrunners for ignoring his notes on the series.The Amazon founder traveled to London’s Leicester Square for the premiere of the big-budget TV show in a move to establish its importance to the company.Bezos, 58, honored showrunners Patrick McKay and John D. Payne while introducing the first two episodes of the series.“Every showrunner’s dream – and I mean every showrunner – their dream is to get notes on scripts and early cuts from the founder and executive chairman,” the Amazon boss joked. “They loved that.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power descended on London last night (August 30) for the new series’ red carpet world premiere.At London’s historic Leicester Square, nearly 2,000 people – comprising cast, crew, fans and more – attended the Odean Luxe and Cineworld. Among them were all 22 of the series’ cast regulars, including Robert Aramayo (Elrond), Maxim Baldry (Isildur), Morfydd Clark (Galadriel), Sir Lenny Henry (Sadoc Burrows), Ema Horvath (Eärien), Lloyd Owen (Elendil) and Charles Edwards (Celebrimbor).Also in attendance were showrunners J.D.

Jeff Bezos made a surprise appearance at The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power global premiere last night, joking about his notes to showrunners and son’s “Don’t f*ck it up” advice as the battle of the tentpole prequels between Amazon Prime Video and HBO’s House of the Dragon hots up.

K.J. Yossman Amazon boss Jeff Bezos (pictured above, left) thanked “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” showrunners Patrick McKay and John D. Payne at the U.K. premiere of the Amazon Prime Video series on Tuesday night – for ignoring his notes on the show. “Every showrunner’s dream – and I mean every showrunner – their dream is to get notes on scripts and early cuts from the founder and executive chairman,” Bezos quipped while introducing the first two episodes of the series at the Odeon Luxe cinema in Leicester Square. “They loved that. I need to thank you both for listening whenever it helped but mostly I need to thank you for ignoring me at exactly the right times.”

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. It’s almost time to travel back to Middle-Earth. Amazon Prime Video’s hotly anticipated new Lord of the Rings series, “The Rings of Power,” arrives on the streamer on Sept. 2. The fantasy series is one of Amazon Studios’ most ambitious projects to date, already breaking records ahead of its release. Not only is it reported to be the most expensive television series ever made (Amazon apparently shelled out close to $715 million for all eight episodes), but the show’s first trailer racked up an unmatched 257 million views when it first debuted at this year’s Super Bowl, more than any Super Bowl trailer in history. Considering the hype, millions can be expected to tune into the new Tolkein adaptation when it finally hits the streamer this week. The first two episodes of “Rings of Power” will arrive on Amazon Prime on Sept. 2 at 6 p.m. PT/ 9 p.m. ET and will continue to release on a weekly basis until its finale on Oct. 14. The show is available to stream exclusively on Prime Video, meaning you’ll have to sign up for an Amazon Prime account in order to access the episodes. While a subscription costs $14.99/month, you can also sign up for a 30-day free trial to watch the entire “Lord of the Rings” show for free.

Variety interviewed 18 out of the 23 series regulars that star on “The Rings of Power” in order to give readers a primer on both the actors themselves, as well as the characters they will be playing on the series from showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Robert Aramayo had no idea when he first auditioned for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” that the role he was vying for was Elrond, one of the most revered and crucial characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic saga of Middle-earth. Hugo Weaving played Elrond in Peter Jackson’s trilogies of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” and as a kid, Aramayo had been captivated by the films. So when “The Rings of Power” co-showrunner J.D. Payne told him that he’d been cast to play Elrond as a (relatively) young man, the now 29-year-old actor couldn’t believe it. “I had one of those moments where everything in your body feels like you’re on electricity,” he tells Variety. “I was shocked and surprised and felt really, really honored that they will consider me for him.”

Things got scary on the set of Natalie Portman’s upcoming TV series.

Lady In The Lake was paused on Friday (August 26) in Baltimore after an unknown assailant brandished a gun a crew members.Production on the Apple TV+ series, which stars Natalie Portman, Moses Ingram, Y’Lan Noel, Mikey Madison and Brett Gelman, was halted as a precautionary measure.Variety reports that the Baltimore police department confirmed to the publication that a group of locals approached producers working a shoot on Park Avenue in the downtown area at around 4pm on Friday.The group threatened to return that evening to shoot somebody if filming didn’t stop, and they also told crew that $50,000 would have to be paid before production could resume.The Park Avenue shoot has since be scrapped and another location is being sought following the threat, the police added.Series producer Endeavor Content said in a statement: “Friday afternoon, on the Baltimore set of our production Lady In The Lake, prior to the arrival of the cast and crew, per their call time, a driver on our production crew was confronted by two men, one of whom brandished a gun directed at our driver, and then they fled the location.“We are working with the Baltimore Police Department as the investigation is ongoing. The safety and security of our crew, cast and all who work across our productions is our highest priority, and we are thankful no one was injured.

Love Island's Luca Bish and Gemma Owen are finally official - nearly a month since they came in as runners up in the hit ITV2 dating show. After many weeks of teasing that he was set to ask Gemma, 19, to be his girlfriend - and many hints from Gemma herself - Luca, 23, pulled out all of the stops with a huge romantic poolside set up that included red roses, candles, a Cartier bracelet and balloons in the pool spelling out: "Be my girlfriend".

Prime Video’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has been a long time coming. “I read ‘The Hobbit’ when I was about 11 years old, and by the time my son got to about that age, we started reading it together as a bedtime story,” Owen, 56 (“You, Me, and the Apocalypse”) told The Post. “Tolkien’s imagination had such a powerful effect on me when I was younger, and I doubled down on reading it with my son. So, it’s been joyous to re-read everything, and then to read everything I didn’t know was out there, properly – ‘The Silmarillion’ and all of Tolkien’s writings.“It’s been a wonderful journey of discovery and it’s very exciting to be part of it.” “The Rings of Power,” premiering Sept. 1, is set around a thousand years before the events of Peter Jackson’s “Rings” movies.

Antonio Ferme editor The battle for the Iron Throne of streaming is about to begin. Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and HBO’s “House of the Dragon” will be airing simultaneously for six consecutive weeks, which many headlines and social media users have dubbed “the biggest battle in TV history.” When asked about the competition between the two shows, “Rings of Power” executive producer Lindsey Weber dismissed the idea that these stories are in conflict with each other. “For us, we don’t feel any of it. It’s totally manufactured by the media for headlines,” Weber said Tuesday night during a “Rings of Power” panel discussion at Film at Lincoln Center. “I’m quite certain that the cast and crew doesn’t feel any of it either. They know how hard it is to make these things.”

To be frank, it shouldn’t have happened. And while it’s not unprecedented it’s pretty damn close.

Battle-worn fighters, angry seas, stranded ships and dazzling waterfalls. Oh, and an imprisoned man who says “I am not the hero you seek.”