Fans of both J.R.R. Tolkien’s expansive lore and Peter Jackson’s epic six-film movie series collectively lost their sh*t earlier this week when it was announced that Warner Bros. had given the green light to a brand new animated feature film based on The Lord of the Rings.
The War Of Rohirrim has been confirmed to exist in the same continuity as Jackson’s sextet, with animation veteran Kenji Kamiyama directing from a script by The Dark Crystal: Resistance duo Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, and Jackson’s Middle-earth co-writer Phillipa Boyens on board as a creative consultant.
Clearly, WB were casting envious glances in the direction of Amazon’s $465 million episodic adaptation and decided to use their control of the motion picture rights to push their own new project into development. And as The Lord of the Rings surges back into the public consciousness once again, insider Daniel Richtman has now named Zack Snyder as someone interested in directing a Tolkien epic, but unsurprisingly, that’s all the tipster has to say on the matter.
As well as being a frustratingly vague statement, there’s also the Warner Bros.-sized elephant in the room, after the studio cut their fifteen-year ties with the filmmaker, leading to a little bit of thinly veiled mud-slinging in the press from both parties. Without any additional details to provide context or background as to why Snyder wants to helm a Rings movie, what it would be about or even whether it’s intended as live-action or animation, the opaqueness of Richtman’s information means that it’s best not to read too far into it for now. Especially when there are many more scenarios at play at the moment stopping Zack Snyder from directing a Lord of the Rings film than enabling him to do so.