Lord of the Rings Amazon series finalizes cast with four new additions

Sean Astin and Eliijah Wood in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

(Image credit: IMDb)

Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show has wrapped casting on season one. The show's roster adds four new names, as per The Hollywood Reporter, with Charles Edwards (The Crown), Will Fletcher (The Girl Who Fell), Amelie Child-Villiers (The Machine), and Beau Cassidy joining the cast.

Specific details on their roles are, as expected, under wraps for now. But would you remember them anyway? The first season cast currently sits at 39 actors.

But it's safe to say, they won't necessarily play recognisable faces from the franchise. While currently going by the name "the Lord of the Rings series", Amazon's show won't adapt the same story told in Peter Jackson's movie trilogy. It instead takes place elsewhere in Middle-earth mythology.

A prequel series diving into J.R.R. Tolkien stories during the Second Age, it will adapt The Silmarillion and Fellow of the Ring appendices, telling new tales which unravel during a time of peace and follow characters familiar and new, with the official Amazon synopsis promising the show “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.”

Not much else is known about the show's plot. Actor Benjamin Walker recently told Collider the show's mysterious, veiled secrecy will be worth it: "So I really can't say a lot, other than you will be glad you knew so little when you see it." When asked about how long he'll be shooting the first season, he added: "It is a bit nebulous at this point. We've been here a long time and they'll let us go when they're done with us."

This is likely why we've also not got a release date for the series. Production started on the series back in January 2020, with the first two episodes directed by J.A. Bayona and filmed back-to-back. Initial plans were for the show to debut in December 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic and actor Tom Budge's departure led to its now-limbo status.

Gem Seddon is GamesRadar+'s west coast Entertainment News Reporter, working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.