Patrick McKay, who co-produces The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power with J.D. Payne, describes the upcoming series as “the novel Tolkien never wrote.”
J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world has some of the most passionate and fervent fans in the entire world. And wherever that’s the case, you can be almost certain that there’ll be a degree of gatekeeping involved. That’s particularly true when it comes to Amazon’s live-action adaptation, which has received its fair share of controversy over the past four years.
In fact, while the showrunners are aware of the high expectations, mostly thanks to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, they know that this will be far more than a simple 1:1 adaptation.
McKay outlined how the show will incorporate the magic rings into the narrative in a recent Vanity Fair, “It’s the story of the creation of all those powers, where they came from, and what they did to each of those races.”
To them, this story as a whole comes down to one question. “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?” McKay added.
The fact that the writers have come up with most of the narrative and what it will entail can be alarming to a lot of folks who grew up with these books, but The Rings of Power is here to introduce new elements into the established lore of Middle-Earth, whether we like it or not.