Ghost in the Shell director to helm The Lord of the Rings animated series

There’s going to be a whole lot of Middle Earth to explore in the coming years. While Amazon Prime Videos have already begun work on the upcoming The Lord of the Rings web series, Warner Bros and New Line Cinema have now announced that a standalone anime feature is also in the pipeline.

The animated project will be helmed by Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex director Kenji Kamiyama, who had also worked as an animator in classics such as Akira. 

The screenplay will be written by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who wrote Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Philippa Boyens, who had co-written the LOTR trilogy with Peter Jackson is also onboard the animated series as a consultant.

The movie will focus on one of Middle Earth’s greatest heroes, King of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand. For the fans of the film, Hammerhand is mostly referred to in the second movie, especially due to a certain fortress that is known as Helm’s Deep. 

Meanwhile, the season 1 of LOTR web series, which is reportedly made on a budget of $464 million, has Robert Aramayo as the lead character named Beldor. Markella Kavenagh and Joseph Mawle are also part of the huge ensemble cast of the series, which is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as the characters confront the re-emergence of evil in Middle Earth.