Amazon's Lord Of The Rings Series Casts Will Poulter In Lead Role

From Midsommar to Middle-earth. 

Amazon has cast Will Poulter, who recently appeared in horror maestro Ari Aster's sun-soaked fright-fest Midsommar, on the upcoming Lord of the Rings television series. 

Variety broke the news in an exclusive report. 

It's unknown who Poulter will play on the show, which is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved high fantasy novels, though it's evident his is an important character. He's said to be set for a "lead role" on the series, developed for the small screen by writing duo JD Payne and Patrick McKay, who recently helped bring to life Disney's live-action Jungle Cruise movie.

If all goes to plan and there's no sudden backing-out of the project on Poulter's part, he'll join Australian actress Markella Kavenagh (Romper Stomper, Picnic at Hanging Rock) for the show. Kavenagh will reportedly play a character named Tyra on Lord of the Rings. 

This is a big win for Poulter, whose career has been on a steady incline since the early-2010s. The English actor got his first big film break in 2010's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in which he played the arrogant and generally unfriendly Eustace Stubb. From there, Poulter continued to carve out a fantastic career for himself with roles in 2013's We're the Millers (as the adorably naive Kenny Rossmore), 2014's The Maze Runner and 2018's Maze Runner: The Death Cure (as Gally), 2015's The Revenant (as Jim Bridger), 2017's War Machine (as Sgt. Rick Ortega) and Detroit (as Philip Krauss), and 2018's Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (as game designer Colin Ritman). Most recently, Poulter proved his dynamic acting chops starring as Mark in Midsommar, a horror film that explores themes of grief and toxic relationships against the backdrop of a cult commune in central Sweden. 

The Lord of the Rings series is something different for Poutler, who hasn't yet had a long-standing, leading stint on television. His lengthiest turn on the small screen was on School of Comedy, a British sketch comedy show on which Poulter portrayed various different characters (as is standard for shows of its kind). Lord of the Rings will allow Poulter to own a character for more than just a handful of sketches or for the duration of a film or two. Who exactly that character will be is, as we've mentioned, totally unknown, but the reality of the situation alone is worth getting excited about. 

There isn't a ton of information about Amazon's Lord of the Rings adaptation on hand, though we do know that the series takes place in the time before The Fellowship of the Rings and isn't a direct page-to-screen translation of Tolkien's work. It seems that the show isn't interested in perfectly recreating Tolkien's novels for television, and is instead aiming to tell new stories set in the same world. The official Twitter account for Amazon's The Lord of the Rings previously teased that the show is set during the Second Age — the time in which Sauron's One Ring was created — by tweeting a photo of a map with the caption, "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

With many mysteries still surrounding the upcoming Lord of the Rings series, all we can do is wait patiently for more information and count down the days until the series hits Amazon Prime Video sometime in 2021.