Warner Bros. Animation has released the first clip from it’s upcoming Middle-earth anime epic The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
In the clip, we see the King Helm’s daughter, Hera, challenge the villainous Wulf to a fight. Despite being urged not to engage, Wulf accepts, and Hera charges after him.
Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim tells the “fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan.
“A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg—a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep.
“Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Héra, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.”
New Line Cinema’s original anime feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim comes from award-winning filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series).
Screenwriter Philippa Boyens, who wrote Peter Jackson’s live-action films, said: “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim works for anime because it is character-driven and contained within its own world, two things that work beautifully with Japanese storytelling, and there’s no better storyteller in this medium than Kenji Kamiyama.”
The rest of the voice cast includes Brian Cox as Helm Hammerhand the king of Rohan, Gaia Wise as Héra of Rohan, Luke Pasqualino as Wulf, Lorraine Ashbourne (Netflix’s Bridgerton), Yazdan Qafouri (I Came By), Benjamin Wainwright (BBC One’s World on Fire), Laurence Ubong Williams (Gateway), Shaun Dooley (Netflix’s The Witcher), Michael Wildman (Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), Jude Akuwudike (Beasts of No Nation), Bilal Hasna (BBC’s Sparks), and Janine Duvitski (ITV’s Benidorm).
With Kamiyama at the helm, the original feature is being produced by Boyens, from the screenwriting team behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Trilogies, alongside Jason DeMarco and Joseph Chou, who, in addition to their many separate animation projects, collaborated on the Blade Runner: Black Lotus series.
The executive producers are Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Sam Register, Carolyn Blackwood and Toby Emmerich.
The screenplay is by Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews,Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou, with a story by Addiss & Matthews and Boyens, based on characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim be released theatrically worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures on December 13th, 2024, and internationally beginning 11 December 2024.
