Showrunner JD Payne on LOTR: ‘The stories of Tolkien are about the underdogs’

In a recent interview with Firstpost ahead of the release of LOTR , showrunner JD Payne talks about his vision for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. He mentions as to why he chose the series format and how is The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power is relevant in today’s world. Payne believes that the streaming format is the coolest as it takes the best of both the worlds – television and feature films. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings of Power will stream on Amazon Prime Video from September 2.

Excerpts from the interview:

As a showrunner how authentic are you to Tolkien’s fact?

From the very beginning I have been reading the Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and thinking about trying to make sure we were in tune with them. We knew we had to compress the time by taking thousands of stories and then putting it together in a series. That was one of the big licenses that we took. In this process we spoke to Tolkien’s grandson and made sure that everything was right. We also worked with Tolkien’s scholars. We made sure that we did it in as respectful and also as Tolkienian way as possible. We tried to stay very true to the fact.

The scale of the project and the legacy of it, did it ever intimidate you?

These are stories that are integrated with our hearts and souls. The LOTR stories are really part of us. We wanted to get it right and this has been my childhood dream which has come true in the biggest way that we could have ever imagined. So, the kind of pressure we put on ourselves was enormous so that we do justice to the project.

Lord of the Rings was always taken in a feature film format. But why did you opt for a series format and how was the treatment different?

Any kind of adaptation is going to be challenging considering what you are going to bring in and what you are going to alter. Talking about thousands and thousands of pages of work into a series wasn’t an easy task. Some would also think of documentary middle earth where you can just go in and just tell the story. But we just wanted to tell the stories in detail, which is possible in a streaming format.

What is cool about the streaming format is that it is not really television or movies, it is this new thing that takes the best of both worlds! You get freedom of long form serialized storytelling and the glitz of glamour of costumes, where you can have huge battles of armies and landscapes built in the best possible way. And Tolkeins require both.

The show is set thousand years ago; what elements did you add to make it more relevant in today’s world?

Tolkien never wanted to make something that was allegorical. He didn’t want it to be limited or timeless and wanted the story to be applicable to all. The themes of Tolkien talk a lot about the underdogs. The stories of Tolkien resonates across times. Even powerful societies can face the ruins if they cannot integrate the different voices within them and that’s what LOTR talks about. These views resonate with when Tolkien wrote the, it resonates with us even today and hope it will resonate with hundreds of years to come.

How would you describe The Rings of Powers in two emotions?

Determination and hope.

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