Amazon releases a new map which gives us some clues about their planned Lord of the Rings series

With HBO’s Game of Thrones coming to an end, the world is still looking for its next big TV show to devour. Amazon believes they will have it by taking everyone back into the world of Middle-Earth and giving us an exciting new TV series based on Tolkien’s most popular work, Lord of the Rings. Amazon is so convinced that this series is going to be the next big thing in fact, that they were prepared to pay $250 million for the rights for the series. That is a phenomenal amount of money that would make many movie studios crumble. And that is before the actual production costs are factored in – which could easily end up being between $100-150 million per season.

So, just what exactly does Amazon plan for this new series that is supposed to serve up as a prequel to the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies? Well, a lot of ideas have been doing the rounds and focusing on everything from Aragorn’s adventures before his Lord of the Rings adventures or possibly even adaptations of Tolkien’s other popular work, The Silmarillion.

Amazon may have given us some clues as to what to expect from the new show thanks to a new map they dropped recently on Twitter:

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, pic.twitter.com/Btk2CRsQI2

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) February 18, 2019

So, what exactly does the map tell us? Well, I think the first thing it will tell us is the time period the show will likely take place in. In the map Amazon has given us the Mirkwood forest can be seen under the label of Rhovanion, and it has an indentation on its eastern side; that’s a result of an event known as the East Bight of Mirkwood – forestry that occurred during the Third Age by the Northmen. Furthermore, the map also shows the region of Calenardhon – a kingdom that eventually transformed into the kingdom of Rohan in the Third Age.

So what does that mean? Well if anything that the series could take place between the early-to-mid Third Age. Which is important because that is a timeline which actually predates both The Silmarillion and the birth of Aragorn, meaning that we are likely to get some completely new stories and characters coming out of the series. Obviously, that doesn’t mean the series can’t time-jump to later years, but I don’t think this is what amazon intends. Rather, by setting this series so far in the past, it not only allows them to shape their own stories without worrying about staying too faithful to the works of Tolkien, it also allows them to play the long game by possibly even having many other stories or series take place at other moments in time while still building up to big events mentioned in Tolkien’s timeline of Middle Earth.

What I find even more intriguing though are the phrases that comes along with the map:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

This comes from a poem from The Lord of the Rings that describes all of the Rings of Power and could indicate the series could tell us the stories of (at least in part) the Seven and how they each met their fate in being holders of the different rings.

Either way there is a lot that can be told in Tolkien’s Universe and it appears Amazon is thinking carefully about exactly how they want this series to unfold. As a massive fan of Tolkien’s world, it is definitely one I am looking for. Whether it can live up to the hype and that massive budget deficit though is going to be a massive challenge for them to overcome.

Last Updated: February 21, 2019