A sprawling, insanely pricey fantasy TV series based on a fictional universe that was introduced in a series of incredibly popular and famously long and complex books? And books, at that, by an author with a double-R middle initial? No, it's not George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Instead, it's a prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga, soon to become an Amazon Prime original series.
Don't expect a retread of familiar territory. Amazon isn't going to remake the LOTR series that was last seen as several acclaimed Peter Jackson-directed movies. Though this series, like the film saga, will be set in Tolkien's Middle-earth, the company says the original storylines will come from a time period preceding The Fellowship of the Ring.
And the series cost a lot of silver coin, or whatever the monetary unit is in pre-LOTR Middle-earth. Back in 2017 when news of the show broke, Deadline reported that Amazon reportedly paid close to $250 million for the rights, making it the most expensive TV series ever. That doesn't, of course, include the money it'll cost to hire the actors and crew and actually make the sure-to-be-pricey show. The Hollywood Reporter speculates that the whole shebang could cost more than $1 billion.
The basics: What, when and where?Lord Of The Rings Cast
WHAT.. Amazon bought the global TV rights to Tolkien's (it's pronounced Tol-KEEN) Lord of the Rings saga, though what exactly the company will do with those rights could evolve. Right now plans are for a multiseason series set in that pre-Fellowship time period called The Second Age.
But there may be more than one show: Amazon's initial press release noted that the deal includes a potential additional spin-off series. Our guess is we'll have to see how the first show does before going there.
WHEN.. And that first show will be around for a while: The deal requires Amazon to commit to five seasons, as well as begin production within two years. Since the deal was announced in November 2017, expect to hear some news on the series before November 2019.
In a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke said the company hopes to air the show sometime in 2021.
WHERE.. Salke also told Deadline that the new show could return to New Zealand, where the Peter Jackson movies were shot. 'I think we might be in New Zealand. I don't know,' she said. 'But we're going to have to go somewhere interesting that could provide those locations in a really authentic way, because we want it to look incredible.'
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How to watch
As you almost certainly know, Amazon has moved well beyond an online bookstore (those were the days..), and has an entertainment arm of its own. Amazon Video is a premium on-demand entertainment service that not only licenses content but also makes its own. Amazon Studios has produced such original series as The Man in the High Castle and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, as well as movies.
You need an Amazon Prime membership to access the content, but once you have one, you get unlimited streaming via Prime Video, which is now available in more than 200 countries.
Who's involved?
No cast members have been announced as of May 2019, but back in July 2018, Amazon announced that Godzilla vs. Kong screenwriters J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay will develop the show. 'We feel like Frodo, setting out from the Shire, with a great responsibility in our care -- it is the beginning of the adventure of a lifetime,' Payne and McKay said in a statement.
In George R.R. Martin's online post after the Game of Thrones finale in May 2019, Martin wrote, 'Amazon scooped up Bryan Cogman, and put him to work on developing shows of his own, as well as helping out on their big Tolkien project.'
Cogman wrote 11 episodes of HBO's Game of Thrones series and was a co-executive producer by the end of the show's run. Variety says Cogman will consult on the show.
One Twitter user asked actor Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in the Peter Jackson trilogy, if he'd be involved in the new series. His answer? 'Um, I'm gonna watch it!'
What's it all about?
You won't have seen these stories before, but you'll know the Middle-earth setting and likely some of the details from LOTR. Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins, said in the original Amazon press release that the Amazon team has 'exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien's original writings.'
But not everything will be unfamiliar. Amazon reportedly has rights to use elements from the Jackson movies, though we're unsure what form that will take. Jackson himself told Metro U.K. that he won't be deeply involved, but that he might offer some assistance.
'I think they're going to send us some scripts to see if we can help them along,' Jackson said. 'I wish them all the best and if we can help them we certainly will try.'
There are four ages in Tolkien's works. Lord of the Rings was set in the Third Age, and this series will take place in The Second Age, Amazon revealed in a tweet sent in March 2019. The famous One Ring of Lord of the Rings fame was forged in this time period by the Dark Lord Sauron, who seems likely to be a major part of the new show.
Amazon's Salke told Deadline, 'we're not remaking the movies, but we're also not starting from scratch. So, it'll be characters you love.'
But probably not one particular character. Tolkien fan site The One Ring stirred buzz among fans in May 2018 by tweeting that the show's first season would be centered on a young Aragorn. Portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in the Peter Jackson movies, he was an acclaimed warrior and ranger who plays a major role in Lord of the Rings. But that rumor fell flat once Amazon confirmed the Second Age setting, since Aragorn wouldn't have been around then.
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In February 2019, Amazon shared an interactive map showing the part of Middle-earth that'll be depicted in the show. Users can zoom in on parts of the map and move around it. There's not a lot to see so far, but the map does show the island of Númenor, which rose from the sea and then was destroyed and sunk back under the waves, Atlantis-style.
You can bookmark the show's official site, as well as follow it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Not much to see yet, but as news is revealed, there or elsewhere, we'll update this post.
This story was first posted in May 2019 and will be updated as news is revealed.
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I’ve been playing a few board games that use an app lately, but Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth is the first one I’ve played that’s been designed from the ground-up with a digital companion in mind.
Funnily enough it’s published by Fantasy Flight, source of most of the other app-based games I’ve been messing with. Descent and Imperial Assault Acapella app for computer. , for example, have in recent years had their traditional board game design retrofitted with apps that do things like run enemy AI and automate some of the administrative busywork. They’re also the company behind XCOM, perhaps the most famous app-based board game, though in that case the software was as much for atmosphere and adaptation purposes as it was a game-changer.
Journeys is different. It’s not a board game with an app that just helps out, it’s a board game where the app—available on iOS, Android and Steam— is absolutely essential. Or at least it is by design.
Players (it supports 1-5) choose a character, one of six classes, equip their items then team up and head off into the wilds of Middle Earth, on an adventure that combines exploration with combat. For much of the game you’ll be travelling on an overworld map fighting (or avoiding) enemy patrols while investigating anomalies and tracking down objectives.
Occasionally the action zooms in and you switch to a small-scale tactical map, where exploration gives way to more intricate close-quarters combat rules. Both ask much the same thing of you, though: in true dungeon-crawling fashion you’ll be doing little else but constantly checking, whether to solve puzzles or swing a sword.
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In Journeys, this is done with cards, not dice. Every player has a small deck of cards in their possession, some of them drawn from a general pool, others only available to certain classes and characters. Each card has a hit value, but also an effect. These all get shuffled together and are then drawn for checks; if an overworld puzzle requires three wisdom, and your character’s wisdom stat is two, then you draw two cards, and see whether you’ve got enough of the hits to clear.
Where this deck comes into its own is that at the start of each turn you can equip one card (and sometimes more of them), and can start using its effect text instead of its check value. Dice can often feel cruel, and while drawing cards still has a large element of chance to it, the fact you can build and later even improve your deck as the game goes on is really empowering.
Now to the app. The reason we’re here in the first place. It of course does a lot of app-y stuff that you’d expect from a board game companion, like keep track of enemy damage, but in Journeys it also does so much more. It deploys quest markers, handles enemy movement, remembers your core items, provides ambient music and even narrates each mission’s story for you.
It’s most important task is to literally build the game’s world. A Journeys mission usually begins with just a couple of pieces of overworld terrain on the table; exploring and causing the story to unfold will usually expand this, and each time it does the app procedurally-generates more of Middle Earth for you to add to the adventure. I’ve played the opening mission three times now and got a wildly different map each time, while playing with more players will expand the size of those maps and the number of enemies you encounter.
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This is a great way of using digital technology to do something that a traditional board game would really struggle with, and the act of literally building Middle Earth around your characters was loads of fun.
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Another welcome benefit of the app doing so much heavy lifting was that you can play Journeys solo and get the exact same experience (mechanically, if not socially), which I appreciated. It really helped me learn the rules before playing with friends by streamlining an early campaign playthrough, and was even fun in its own right, a rarity for me and singleplayer board games.
While I’ve carved them up neatly in this review, when it comes to actually playing Journeys the board game half of the experience can’t be separated from the app. The latter isn’t just here to help the former, it’s woven through it in a way that I haven’t experienced in board games before.
Most of the time this was great, but I also couldn’t shake the nagging sensation that at times there was something missing in the union of the two worlds. It’s a bit inconsistent with just how much of the work it wants to do; sometimes it’ll completely take over and walk you through very carefully-curated steps (like during combat), while at other times (like exploration) it’ll just sit there.
None of that’s a problem with the game. The rules underpinning everything are fine, and when everything’s humming I had a great time. It’s an issue with the pacing and amount of control coming out of the app, which at times had me wishing it could have made up its mind and either settled for being a board game (when it automates some of the physical things that make board games to tangible) or a video game (when it keeps asking you to dig through a pile of terrain tiles every four minutes to expand the map).
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Thankfully those concerns are incidental ones, not a constant pain in the ass, and most of my time with Journeys was spent adventuring and fighting and the app did its job pretty well. It’s a fast, streamlined dungeon crawler, a great way for a small crew to spend a night (or a few weeks, the app saves your progress, of course) adventuring together.
As Fantasy Flight continue to integrate apps more and more into their design, though, it’s clear that there’s still a bit of balancing and honing yet to be done before it all feels fine and normal and worth it.
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