Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings series has found its villain! Deadline has reported that actor Joseph Mawle, aka Uncle Benjen from Game of Thrones, will play Oren, the show’s big bad.
He’ll be joining Will Poulter, who plays the “young hero Beldor,” and Markella Kavenagh, who plays fellow lead Tyra.
It looks like these are the only cast members who’ve been announced thus far, and aside from the show being set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth, all other plot details have been kept tightly under wraps.
Back in July, Amazon announced the “fellowship” of creators who’d be bringing the series to life. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona will direct the first two episodes, while Patrick McKay and John D. Payne will be the showrunners. Also joining the team will be Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, who worked on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy back in the early aughts. The full list of writers and producers who will be taking on the series can be found here.
According to Deadline, pre-production on the series has begun, with production expected to start in New Zealand in the “coming months.”