We don’t know when the site went live but Amazon has launched a Website where fans can browse or download their version of the Middle-earth map. (NOTE: Since this article was first published, a 2nd version of the map has been posted. You can download both versions of the map.)
The map does not represent J.R.R. Tolkien’s version of Middle-earth. Nor does it represent Peter Jackson’s version of Middle-earth. But friends and fans of Tolkien may recall that other Middle-earth maps have been released under license.
The mountain range on the far right of the map has elicited comments from fans around the world. We don’t have any information about the region or how it may fit into the production team’s plans at this time.
Rumors, of course, have been flying around the Web. One of the most widely circulated rumors is that the show will be filmed in Scotland.
Slashfilm reported that “Amazon is open to Peter Jackson being involved” with their version of Middle-earth.
Another rumor is that Amazon has booked Wardpark Film and Television Studios in Scotland. There is, at this time, nothing on Wardpark’s Website about the Middle-earth production and this is just an unsubstantiated rumor.
In July 2018 Amazon announced that JD Payne and Patrick McKay had been hired to produce the show.
You can follow the official Facebook page here.
There is an official Instagram page here.
And you can follow the official Twitter account here.
Seems the Amazon page cannot be viewed by non Prime members.
Ignore my previous post. For whatever reason it didn’t load correctly the first time for me.
I know it’s Amazon with all their lovely big data centers, but maybe their site was overwhelmed as Middle-earth fans around the world learned about the site.
Well, you’re wrong. The heavily-forested regions of the Mountains of the East, also called Red Mountains (Orocarni in High-Elvish), appear in several maps by Tolkien, and in Fonstad’s ‘Atlas of Middle-Earth’. Just Google for them.
They appear somewhat diminished in the Amazon map, but it’s still them.
I am sure the Amazon mountains are inspired by Tolkien’s stories, but Tolkien never drew a map of Middle-earth’s far eastern regions after he began working on The Lord of the Rings. All earlier maps were for a different fictional world and Karen Fonstad’s maps were hybridizations of Tolkien’s maps from the different phases of his work.
My hope is that this represents Rhûn, and lands farther east maybe, and that this means that the Amazon show is set there. (Otherwise why invent a new region?) This would allow them the familiarity of a Middle-earth show but remove the danger of retreading old stories or running into continuity snafus, or the other obvious pitfalls of an attempt to make a direct prequel or sequel to the Tolkien stories (or worse, adapt The Silmarillion, which would potentially be disastrous).
When we consider what little we know about Rhûn and the east, I think it paints a very promising picture for a potential show:
The elves who live there are the Avari, the dark elves. So we’ve got elves but they have the potential to be extremely different in culture, attitudes, appearance from the people of Legolas, Galadriel, Elrond, etc. who’ve been represented in the existing movies.
There are men out here (to put it politely) don’t have the western European appearance or culture of the men we see in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. This made them scary and dangerous in Tolkien, but for the Amazon show this means an opportunity to cast some people of colour in big roles in a fantasy show, which would be great.
There are dwarves there too, four of the seven dwarven clans dwell out here. In The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings we only see dwarves of the Longbeard clan, but out here live the Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks, and Stonefoots. So again, we have dwarves but the opportunity for new and different kinds than what we’ve seen before.
We also know that of the five wizards who dwell in Middle-earth, two of them came out this way. Called the Blue Wizards, they were sent east to oppose Sauron’s efforts to corrupt men there, and apparently did so by founding schools of magic and teaching magic to the people.
In terms of history, we know little, but during the Watchful Peace, about a thousand years before the events in Lord of the Rings, we know that Sauron, in his guise as the Necromancer, left his tower in Dol Guldur when he thought the Council of the Wise was becoming too suspicious of him. He traveled east to Rhûn and set about corrupting the men there and turning them into allies he could use later. He spent four hundred years there, returning to Dol Guldur only when Smeágol found the Ring and thus attracted it’s master’s attention.
So, what we can hope to see is a series that’s set in Middle-earth, among men and dwarves and elves and wizards, but different in culture and appearance to the largely Western European flavour we got in the movies. If the show is set there, it would make all the sense in the world to set it in the same period when Sauron threatened it. This way, we get wizards fighting against Sauron with the souls of the people in the balance – a familiar conflict – but in a totally new time and place.
I hope this is the direction they’re going – it could be very exciting and the relative dearth of information in Tolkien gives them a creative freedom that they would lack if they were adapting, say, The Silmarillion, which would merely be an inevitable disappointment.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the eastward extension of the Iron Hills is a new addition too?
I’d say the entire Iron Hills configuration looks very different.
Since the latest reveal on Amazon’s LOTR Twitter feed, we now know they are indeed setting this in the Second Age, with Numenor and Middle Earth. I think the clues of the lines of the poem point to perhaps several seasons about the forging of the many rings, by Sauron (and Celebrimbor). Their ambition may be the entire Akallabeth, but I think they will start with Sauron’s plot to pretend friendship with the Noldor.
Apologies for conflating time in my previous comment. Rings made in early Second Age. But I still think content may include the later making of the rings. But Numenor means all Second Age at first. Only question is when.
I just checked and actually I wasn’t off in my dates. The rings of power were made in S.A. 1500-1600. Drowning of Numenor SA 3319. Huge amount of time. So lots of time for episodic stories, perhaps organized by each story arc in different seasons.