These Tolkien fans pitched a 50-hour ‘Lord of the Rings’ ‘mega-epic.’ ‘The Rings of Power’ is the result.
Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne had been writing screenplays together for two decades when Amazon Studios announced it had acquired the rights to make a TV series based on the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings.”
And who wouldn’t want to do that?
“We, along with half the other writers in Hollywood, raised our hands and said we’d love the opportunity,” Payne says during a recent video call with McKay and producer Lindsey Weber. “We should be so lucky.”
Both loved the works of Tolkien. McKay’s mother gave him “The Hobbit” when he was in fifth grade. Payne came to Middle-earth through director Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” and devoured the source material.
So they had strong ideas from the start of their quest.
“We started thinking, ‘OK, here’s what Amazon bought the rights to,’” Payne says. “There are hundreds, probably thousands, of potential stories within that of material. And as we looked around, very quickly we arrived at the time period of the Second Age.”
The Second Age of Middle-earth takes place thousands of years before the Third Age known from the books and movies. Though it’s not entirely disconnected from that world, Payne notes.
“We felt like this is Tolkien’s great untold epic,” he says. “This era is pregnant with so many amazing stories.
“You have the forging of the Rings of Power. The rise of the Dark Lord Sauron. The last alliance of elves and men.
“Amazon wanted to make something really large, and so we came in right away saying we want to make a 50-hour mega-epic,” Payne says. “And that, very quickly, I think, got their attention.
Four years after Amazon hired McKay and Payne to make the series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” premieres on Prime Video on Friday, Sept. 2. As they spoke a few weeks before that, they seemed still unable to believe this dream came true.
Though, as McKay notes, nobody thought Frodo could complete his quest, either.
“Our impression was we were sort of dark horses in a way, and underdogs in a way,” he says. “But sometimes underdogs have a great history in Tolkien.”
Scouring the Second Age
The story told in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was drawn from Tolkien’s appendices to “Lord of the Rings,” his mytho-histories in “The Silmarillion,” and clues scattered throughout his best-known works that refer to earlier times.
“Our process of adapting it was finding every single one of those threads that talk about this era, but also talking about the histories of each of these cultures,” McKay says.”
Sometimes that meant they could use a character familiar to most fans. Because elves rarely die, the series features a younger Galadriel, a character played by Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson’s films, and here by Morfydd Clark.
There are no Hobbits in the Second Age, though their predecessors, known as Harfoots, provide the lightness and good cheer of their hairy-footed descendants.
“Finding those breadcrumbs is the beginning of a process of thinking about who those people might have been,” McKay says. “What do we know about the Hobbits in the Third Age and Frodo and Sam? What are the qualities we associated with Hobbits? Bravery and loyalty. Where did that come from?
The first season’s characters are about half from the books, half newly imagined, he says.
“Tolkien left us the seeds that are so rich with possibility and imagination,” McKay says. “All we have to do is water them a little and a huge tree springs up.”
Making Middle-earth
Weber had worked with Payne and McKay at Bad Robot Productions as head of its film department. While she grew up reading Tolkien and had held onto her collection of his books through every house move over the years, she needed a small bit of convincing to join them on their journey.
“The short version is they convinced me to run away and join the fellowship,” she says, laughing.
“We asked Lindsey and she said, ‘Oh, no,’” Payne says. “And then about 24 hours later she’s like, ‘OK, I’m thinking about it.’”
It was, Weber says, a project too exciting to pass up.
“As a fan, I wanted to see it, and I started thinking about how much fun it would be to make this thing,” she says.
“I believe what you said – having heard what we wanted to do – was there are hundreds of thousands of decisions that now need to be made, and every single one of them we have to get right,” Payne says.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” is a massive production, one of – if not the – most expensive TV series ever made.
Its first two episodes establish a sweeping backdrop, mostly filmed in New Zealand and Wales, that includes the cities where humans, elves and dwarfs live along with the natural grandeur of land and sea.
This Middle-earth is diverse. Where “Lord of the Rings” featured young male Hobbits, the new show spotlights two young female Harfoots. This Third Age of Middle-earth features more humans, elves, and dwarfs of color, too.
McKay says that was largely a function of the vast canvas – 50 hours over five seasons – which allowed them to go more deeply into the cultures of Tolkien’s universe.
“We never approached casting or writing in a stunt way of trying to make a statement,” he says.
“I think the question was always, ‘What feels like Middle-earth?’” Weber says. “And friendships, love stories, these things feel inherently Tolkien.”
As a producer, Weber says casting kept her awake at night.
“Oh my gosh, how are we going to find all of these people across all these worlds?” she says, recalling how she worried in the dark, sleepless hours. “We saw thousands and thousands of people and somehow managed to assemble this group you’ll meet in season one.
“It just seems impossible, all of the sorts of miracles it took to complete this production.”
With great power
In July, San Diego Comic-Con served as a sort of coming out party for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” Payne, McKay and Weber, and a large part of the cast, filled Hall H for a preview of the series hosted by talk show host Stephen Colbert, a self-described Tolkien super fan.
“It was really, really fun,” Payne says of finally getting to show a little of what’s to come. “Storytelling is a thing that humans have been doing for thousands of years. We’ve been working very hard on the story, but now we’re getting to share it around the fire with people, and see what this means to people.
“Especially in this time of our world’s history,” he says. “There are a lot of challenges out there right now, and a lot of people are hurting for a lot of different reasons.
“And Middle-earth has a unique ability to find people in their pain, and to bring them a kind of hope and a kind of light that is really unique in the world of entertainment. It almost goes beyond entertainment and comes into a real spiritual experience.”
It’s a project, McKay and Payne say, for which they feel a great responsibility.
“We consider ourselves to be the stewards of Tolkien,” Payne says. “Trying to bring it from one medium to another medium is a joyful thing. And seeing it start to touch people, and to see those reactions, is immensely gratifying.”