The Lord of the Rings Composer Howard Shore Is In Talks to Return to Middle-earth for Amazon Series

Howard Shore, the Oscar-winning composer behind Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, is said to be in talks to return to Middle-earth for the new Amazon series.

As reported by Deadline, this would surely be a most welcome addition for fans of the movies, as Peter Jackson nor the original cast members are known to be joining the project. Shore won three Academy Awards for his work The Lord of the Rings, including for Best Original Score for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King and the Best Original Song award for “Into the West.”

Shore’s impressive credits also include The Hobbit trilogy, The Departed, The Aviator, Dogma, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Silence of the Lambs, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and so many more.

The new, untitled Amazon series set in the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien has already finished principal photography for season one and is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2022. The first season is said to have cost $465 million, which makes it the most expensive TV series yet.

While we’ve only seen one image from the show so far, Amazon has given fans of Middle-earth the plot synopsis to help with the wait;

“The new epic drama brings to screens for the very first time J.R.R. Tolkien’s fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. Beginning in a time of relative peace, thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, 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.”

While we do know this series will return for season two, news recently broke that the show’s production would shift from New Zealand to the UK.

For more on Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings series, check out the cast and our explainer on Middle-earth’s Second Age where the show takes place.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.