Prime Video Shifts ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Release Strategy, Will Drop First 2 Episodes on Sept. 1

Sterling Lord, who represented Jimmy Breslin, Art Buchwald, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gordon Parks and most famously, Jack Kerouac, died Saturday in Ocala, Fla. He was 102 and his death was confirmed by his daughter, Rebecca Lord. No cause was given.

Today (September 1) sees the launch in the US of Amazon Prime Video ’s highly anticipated series, The Rings of Power. This epic drama, set thousands of years before the events of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is thought to be the most expensive TV series ever made.

Once upon a time, there was a stigma between film and television, and when you were a big movie star, you never dared appear in a lowly TV series, and if you were a TV star, crossing over into movie stardom was unheard of and barely ever happened unless your name was John Travolta or George Clooney. And yes, thanks to prestige TV and the Age of Streaming, those days are long gone.

EXCLUSIVE: Joanne Froggatt is staying in business with MGM.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power.Speaking to the audience at the UK premiere of the new Amazon Prime Video series on Tuesday (August 30), the Amazon boss confessed that he and his family are massive fans of J.R.R Tolkien’s fantasy novel.“My grandfather’s the one who introduced me to Tolkien,” said Bezos (via Variety). “I fell in love immediately, I was probably 13 or 14 years old.

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power star Lenny Henry has praised the series for its diverse cast.Henry, who plays Sadoc Burrows in the forthcoming Prime Video series rebooting the franchise, addressed the newfound inclusivity.“That’s to do with it being the 21st century; people want to see themselves,” the actor said in an interview with The Times.“Of course, if you go back, there’s going to be that thing that prevails because the books don’t say… although some of the characters are described as hard-skinned and darker in complexion… but that was then, this is now and we’re telling the story now.”Discussing the entertainment industry more broadly, Henry added: “I didn’t see anybody in charge of anything that looked like me for a very long time, so that is lonely.“You’ve got all of these people now saying the same things that I started saying in 2000, which is ,‘the industry needs to change and can it hurry up, please.’”Earlier this year, Lenny Henry said it was “interesting” to observe an apparent lack of “Black and brown faces” at Glastonbury festival as well as other UK events.A new trailer for The Rings Of Power was released last week, showcasing Middle-earth in its Second Age and teasing characters  including Galadriel, Elrond, High King Gil-galad and Celebrimbor.The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video from September 2.

Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), Archie Madekwe (See) and Alison Oliver (Conversations with Friends) are the newest additions to the cast of Prime Video’s upcoming feature Saltburn, written and directed by Academy Award winner Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman). The trio joins an ensemble, which also includes Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi and Rosamund Pike, as previously announced.

‘Camp Pleasant Lake’ Adds ‘Jerry Maguire’ & ‘Broil’ Actor Jonathan Lipnicki

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” Amazon Studios’ ambitious fantasy series based on the works of author J.R.R. Tolkien and reportedly the most expensive television series ever made, premieres Sept. 2 on Amazon Prime Video. But as the social embargo lifts, critics and fans who have seen the first two episodes ahead of time are flocking to Twitter to share their opinions on the highly anticipated series. Eric Francisco, senior film/TV writer at Inverse, hailed “Rings of Power” as “big, bold and beautiful” but indicated uncertainty as to whether the prequel series will “sit alongside” Peter Jackson’s film trilogy or “deserve Tolkien’s name.”

K.J. Yossman “Clarkson’s Farm,” the break-out British Amazon Prime Video hit starring former “Top Gear” host Jeremy Clarkson attempting to run a farm in the Cotswolds, has just wrapped and is already in the edit suite, confirmed Amazon Studios’ U.K. head of originals Dan Grabiner. “Because it’s farming and it’s authentic it’s so linked to the seasons and the farming year and the weather and things like that,” Grabiner said at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday morning. “Season 2 has just about wrapped filming. It looks amazing, I think that’s fair to say.” Grabiner also promised fans more of the show’s break-out stars Kaleb Cooper, a farming contractor, and experienced farmer Gerald Cooper, who tries to guide Clarkson in his thick West Country accent.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Soumya Sriraman, the former BritBox CEO who joined Amazon to lead its Prime Video Channels business in the U.S., is stepping down after two years at the SVOD. Sources indicate the executive is still at Amazon but will be leaving imminently for another role elsewhere. Sriraman is best known for her work pioneering the best-of-British streaming service BritBox in the U.S., where she is based. The SVOD launched there in 2017 and quickly reached 250,000 subscribers in one year. By the time Sriraman departed, in October 2020, the service had more than 1.5 million subscribers. The successful U.S. launch allowed joint operators BBC Studios and ITV to expand the brand to other markets, including Australia and Canada.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is headed to theaters!

Emily Blunt will soon be seen in “The English”, a new series for Prime Video set in the Old West.

The Western genre waned in popularity in the 1980s, but 21st-century cinema still has the occasional film that harks to its heyday. Most of these are genre hybrids, like Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” or S.

Here’s a first look at Emily Blunt in Hugo Blick’s BBC and Prime Video drama The English.

K.J. Yossman The BBC and Amazon Prime Video have released first-look images of Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer in upcoming period drama “The English.”Written and directed by Hugo Blick (“The Honourable Woman”), “The English” is a Western set in 1890s America where an aristocratic Englishwoman called Lady Cornelia Locke (played by Blunt) and Pawnee ex-cavalry scout Eli Whipp (played by Spencer) join forces “to cross a violent landscape built on dreams and blood,” according to the logline.

More than 350,000 households ditched subscriptions to the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ last quarter, according to regulator Ofcom’s annual Media Nations UK report, which showed a record year for British high-end TV production.