Deadline has learned that Howard Shore, the legendary composer behind the soundtracks for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies, is in talks to return for Amazon Studios’ upcoming TV series set in Middle-earth.
This is a very exciting development for the show, as Shore’s music is pretty much synonymous with the franchise at this point. His Lord of the Rings and Hobbit soundtracks ended up being so highly regarded that they earned him not one, not two, but three Oscar awards.
It’s unclear how much money Amazon is planning to throw at Shore for his musical genius, but the Lord of the Rings series has already cost the studio a ton of money. The first season alone reportedly cost $465 million to develop, which, if accurate, would make it the most expensive TV series of all time.
Some of Shore’s other notable soundtracks include The Fly, David Cronenberg’s disgusting remake of a scientist who accidentally becomes a giant man/fly hybrid as part of a teleportation experiment gone wrong and ultimately gets his head blown off, and The Silence of the Lambs, the 1991 thriller that helped popularize psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Here’s Amazon’s synopsis for its Lord of the Rings TV series:
Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.
Amazon Studios’ The Lord of the Rings series will premiere exclusively on Prime Video on September 2, 2022. The show does not have an official title yet.
Source: Deadline