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The Rings of Power showrunners pushed back on a critics suggestion the series is not strongly rooted in J.R.R. Tolkiens work and addressed those Game of Thrones comparisons.
Prime Video s The Lord of the Rings The Rings of Power showrunners and cast discussed creating their shows immense world and comparisons to HBOs Game of Thrones at the Television Critic Associations semi annual press tour Friday.But the congenial panels most lean-forward moment might have been when a reporter called the highly anticipated fantasy show only vaguely connected to author J.R.R. Tolkiens work compared to The Lord of the Rings movies which were “based on actual printed materials.
I just want to sort of quibble with the vaguely connected said Patrick McKay who is showrunner on the series along with J.D. Payne. We do not feel that way. We feel like deep roots of this show are in the books and in Tolkien. And if we did not feel that way we would all be terrified to sit up here. We feel that this story is not ours. Its a story we are stewarding that was here before us and was waiting in those books to be on Earth. We do not feel vaguely connected. We feel deeply deeply connected to those folks and work every day to even be closer connected. Thats really how we think about it. The duo and the cast were also asked about the inevitable comparisons to HBOs fantasy hit Game of Thrones which has a prequel series House of the Dragon two weeks before the Sept. 2 debut of Rings of Power.
I will take a whack at that McKay said. We talked about this a lot. It comes up and and we totally understand where where the question comes from. We do not think of the show in terms of what genre or other shows that might be out there. We think about Tolkien his lifes work was creating this world. This is Tolkiens Middle Earth and regions beyond Middle Earth and we just wanted to be true to that and sort of drown out and forget about what might be happening in another realm someplace else Tolkiens work is endlessly applicable across cultures and across across times and we feel really grateful to be able to bring it to life in our time.
