It’s been a busy week for The Lord of the Rings fans. After the trailer for the highly-anticipated Amazon Prime series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, dropped, we now know the official release date for the original LoTR anime film.
Titled The War of the Rohirrim, the original anime is a collaboration between New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation. As reported by Variety, the film is set for release on April 12th 2024.
The War of the Rohirrim is entirely separate from the events of Amazon Prime’s upcoming series. It’s set around two centuries before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and will focus on Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan. The creation of Helm’s Deep, the stronghold featured iconically in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, will also be explored.
Japanese anime director Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus) is helming the film through the anime studio Sola Entertainment, which has supposedly been working on the feature since June 2021. There will be some crossover from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films in the form of Philippa Boyens, who was part of the screenwriting team for those trilogies and will be an executive-producer on The War of the Rohirrim.
Richard Taylor, who earned the Oscar for Makeup and Visual Effects for his work on The Lord of the Rings, will also be involved in the new project, alongside J.R.R. Tolkien illustrator John Howe. No voice cast members have yet been selected but it’s highly unlikely there will be a spectacularly controversial choice like Chris Pratt as Mario.
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“The ‘Lord of the Rings’ films took Tolkien’s masterwork to new cinematic heights and inspired a generation,” Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich said. “It’s a gift to be able to revisit Middle-earth with many of the same creative visionaries and the talented Kenji Kamiyama at the helm. This will be an epic portrayal unlike anything audiences have ever seen.”
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Check out a guide to Helm Hammerhand and the War of the Rohirrim:
