The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is riding into theaters. But it sounds like if this movie does well, the door may become open even wider to more new The Lord of the Rings movies in the future. Of course, we already have The Hunt for Gollum on the go, and possibly another Gandalf movie. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop dreaming about the kinds of Tolkien stories we might get to see on our screens. In celebration of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Nerdist spoke to producer Jason DeMarco about this new Middle-earth adventure, how Sauron figures into the story, what the movie adds to Tolkien’s world… and what might come next to The Lord of the Rings movie universe. Check out our full conversation below.
Nerdist: Out of all of Tolkien’s tales, what was it about this one story of Helm Hammerhand that made it leap out to your for adaptation in The War of the Rohirrim?
Jason DeMarco: I think we chose this story because we wanted a movie that could be a standalone movie. You don’t need to know anything before or after. What we liked about this story was that it’s self-contained, and it also is very Shakespearean in its spiel and scope, and it’s about the world of men. It’s not about elves or wizards or anything. You don’t need to have any lore. I think that was attractive for us because we could be very focused in our storytelling and look at one geographical area. And it also made it easier from a production standpoint because we didn’t have to build 50 different locations in animation and have all kinds of designs. So that, I think, was why we really liked the idea of this very focused story in this period of time.
Although it is this very focused story, wizards and elves and all of that are still out there. Do we see them at all in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim?
DeMarco: So, we put in a few things for The Lord of the Rings‘ world. I would call them more Easter eggs. We tried to remind people that this is a wild fantasy world, but we also didn’t want to break canon. So we didn’t try to shoehorn elves or wizards in when there aren’t any. I will say there are a few things in there, but we didn’t want to break canon and just have stuff in there that didn’t make sense.
As far as the rings of The Lord of the Rings‘ Rings of Power, how do you feel they kind of play into the story?
DeMarco: I mean, we have one scene in The War of the Rohirrim, really just our nod to The Lord of the Rings‘ rings. Its just like, at some point, Sauron would’ve told all the orcs just grab rings from everybody. I don’t know where these rings are. So that’s what those two orc characters are doing in our scene. There are a lot of bodies being created in this war, and they’re taking advantage of that chaos to go through the bodies and just pull rings. And they’re bringing all the rings to Sauron because they’re orcs. They’re not that smart. They’re just like, “Here’s a bunch of rings.” Sauron is probably going to take those rings and go, “Get out of here!”
In The Lord of the Rings‘ lore, Wulf works with the Easterlings and Corsairs. And those are people who are loyal to Sauron. How much of a presence does Sauron in the story?
DeMarco: I mean, other than what you’re saying? Nothing really. Again, we stayed away from stuff we felt like was out of canon. The Easterlings and Wulf, and the Dunlendings, bringing them in, we thought made sense. You could see how Easterlings would end up there, even though they’re not really around there because they are mercenaries.
The Corsairs, we ended up leaving out of The War of the Rohirrim because frankly, going to Gondor and going to the coast and animating a bunch of ocean, which is very hard to do, would bring in another story element. And we just felt like, at a certain point, it gets a little too much. So we focused it more on the Dunlendings and the Haradrim, but that’s really all you’re going to see of Sauron is just those guys.
We get to see an earlier Rohan in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which is, of course, a place people know from the original Peter Jackson movies. How do you feel you retained the identity of Rohan but also gave it a different flavor?
DeMarco: The Rohan you see at the beginning of The Two Towers is a rundown Rohan that had years of Wormtongue sort of bringing everything down, winding it down on purpose. So Saruman could sort of take it over. Our Rohan, at the beginning of The War of the Rohirrim, is at its height. Everything’s very healthy. Helm Hammerhand is a very successful king. So we use a lot of the same design elements, but everything’s a little shinier, a little newer, and a little different because at the end of our story, Rohan basically burns down and is rebuilt. So you see some different aspects of Rohan that basically disappear after our film because it got burned down.
And what do you think this adaptation adds to the world of Middle-earth adaptations?
DeMarco: To me, it’s just another sort of example of these characters and stories. The Tolkien could effortlessly write that just tell human stories that don’t necessarily affect the bigger lore. In other words, he tells all kinds of great stories that aren’t about rings and wizards that are just little stories. And to us, there’s this great Shakespearian tragedy built into this. And I think when you watch our film and then you watch the two towers, it will hopefully you will respect even more what happened to those people and what Helm’s Deep represents and why it’s so important to them.
And just to tie it off, it sounds like if this movie does well, there’s space for more Tolkien adaptations in the future, maybe animated, maybe otherwise. And you mentioned you had a few ideas about what could come in the future. Is there anything you can sort of tease or hint at?
DeMarco: I can’t. Well, they’d probably kill me if I do.
What about in terms of your own personal goals?
DeMarco: I mean, personally, I think there are a ton of stories that happen around the War of the Ring that were not shown in any of The Lord of the Rings movies. There are battles, there are major sequences. I would like to revisit some of those.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim releases in theaters on December 13.