Will Amazon's Lord of the Ring series focus on young Aragorn?
Reports suggest the King of Gondor will be the star in the big-budget new series
Amazon's super expensive Lord of the Rings series is still shrouded in mystery – but a report has emerged which suggests that the streaming service has finally nailed down the core focus: Aragorn's (Viggo Mortensen) pre-fellowship adventures.
A tweet from long-running Tolkien fan site The One Ring declares that "multiple sources" have confirmed that the first series of the drama will centre around Mortensen's character, the ranger and warrior who aided Frodo and co in getting the ring to Mount Doom throughout the original book series, before being crowned as king of Gondor.
As The One Ring says in a series of follow-up tweets, this falls in line with Amazon's original assurance that the series would not tread over the well-worn ground of the Lord of the Rings, but focus on other Middle Earth adventures. Plus, the thought of learning more about Aragorn's past, as one of the fan favourites, is sure to whet the whistle of fans everywhere.
Though Aragorn doesn't feature in any of the Lord of the Rings subsidiary novels penned by Tolkien, much of his backstory – including his youth in the elf kingdom of Rivendell and his romance with Liv Tyler's Arwen - was drawn out extensively over the course of the Lord of the Rings series. In other words, there'll be plenty for the show-runners to play with.
Sounds like Amazon could be on to something here...
