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Game of Thrones' Bryan Cogman Joins Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV Show
Game of Thrones writer and co-executive producer Bryan Cogman has joined Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV show. Amazon acquired the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's novels back in November 2017, and is in cooperation with the Tolkien Estate and Trust. Teaming with HarperCollins and New Line Cinema, a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, they have since begun production on the new multi-season, billion dollar, prequel.
Early fan speculations led some to believe that the series would be about Aragorn, but Amazon Studios has confirmed that they will be going with a new direction that fans of the books and the films have yet to see. On March 7, Amazon announced via Twitter that the show will take place 3,000 years before the films, in The Second Age, and the Middle-earth maps released tease that the show could take place as early as S.A. 1350 - 1600. The show is slated to begin filming this August, and could be filmed in Scotland. Although not much is known at the moment about the cast, or the script, writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay are confirmed to be onboard. Amazon is aiming to release the series sometime in 2021.
Variety reports that Bryan Cogman, who's known for his work on the immensely popular and controversial show Game of Thrones, has now signed on to consult for the new television series. Starting off as an assistant to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Cogman was later promoted to writer, and later co-executive producer, due to his extensive, encyclopedic knowledge of George R.R. Martin's fantasy world, Westeros. Cogman was an integral member of the show, and wrote his final episode in the 8th and final season, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” which aired on April 21.
Cogman is no stranger to alternate worlds and the high-fantasy genre, and will likely find it easy to engross himself in the vast and intricate universe of Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings books. And since almost everyone, fans and former cast members alike, have revealed the desire to move on from the books and films, it sounds like a safer choice to set the show in an entirely different time period. This means there will be an entirely new cast, and the opportunity to tell stories that have yet to be told. The show is in good hands, so hopefully Amazon Studios will do Tolkien proud, despite their plan to divert from the plot of his books.
An official release date hasn't been announced yet, but Amazon Studios' contractual agreement with the Tolkien Estate gives them until 2020 to begin production, so the Lord of the Rings TV show will likely be released sometime in 2021. Already teasing the new story arc for the prequel series on social media, the streaming service will likely release more information as that due date approaches. Until then, fans will just have to wait and see what Cogman's contribution to the show will look like.
