The One Ring has reportedly secured a copy of the official summary for Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings TV show.

Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

The One Ring’s early reporting on the new project was spotty – insisting that the show was about “Young Aragorn” long after that idea had been rejected – but their recent reporting has been more reliable, revealing several pieces of information before it was confirmed by Amazon, so this appears to be reliable.

The synopsis leaves out a lot of information – such as the show’s actual name, since just calling it The Lord of the Rings will be confusing – but it does confirm a lot of the information that’s been released over the past year and a half or so. The show will indeed be set in the Second Age of Middle-earth and will deal with the island kingdom of Númenor, the elven kingdom of Lindon and the first rise to power of the Dark Lord Sauron.

Not confirmed in this summary, but now overwhelmingly likely, is that the series will deal with the forging of the Rings of Power by Sauron some 5,000 years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The series as a whole, which Amazon envisages as spanning five seasons, may cover a period of many centuries or even millennia, spanning the long-running conflict between Sauron and the elves of Middle-earth, aided by their redoubtable ally of Númenor, a great island-empire in the western ocean and forerunner to the later kingdom of Gondor.

by /Werthead/

Lord of the Rings: The Second Age (tbc) is currently filming in New Zealand, with the production based in Auckland. Filming took a break over Christmas and the New Year but is due to resume shortly. It is unclear when the show will premiere, but with production expected to run for several months (having been underway since September, with the first two episodes shot back in February-March) and extensive post-production being required, it may be that the series will not debut until 2022.