This year's Annecy Animation Festival is more special than ever from premieres to special first looks at upcoming animated projects. One of the projects we have seen was The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
Andy Serkis, who was a special guest at the event, held a panel withThe War of the Rohirrim director Kenji Kamiyama, Warner Bros. Senior Vice President Jason DeMarco, and producers Philippa Boyens and Joseph Chou. The panel started with a special message by Peter Jackson, who was revealed to be an executive producer of the film at the event, thanking the Annecy attendees and saying Annecy was the first audience. However, the message was interrupted by Gollum attacking Jackson and dropping several f-bombs. The video ended with Gollum saying “Animate this motherf****r.”
The panel then continued with Andy Serkis presenting the first 20 minutes of The War of the Rohirrim, which ended with a short teaser for the film. The official synopsis for the film reads as:
Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg - a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm's Deep. Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Hera, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.
The preview we have seen introduced the characters and showed us how Wulf came to seek vengeance. The creators mentioned how they had very little material to work on and how they had to give all the characters meaningful backgrounds. Philippa Boyens described the movie as "epic and intimate character work." The film being the first female-led Lord of the Rings feature was one of the central talking points. Boyens and Kamiyama also mentioned how the character Héra "sort of emerged" naturally when they started to craft the story and they believed it should be her story first and foremost. Boyens also added Héra is "not the typical superhero heroine type," and how she is a "more real character with flaws and courage."
It was also mentioned that current version of the movie is 2 hours 30 minutes, however, they noted that they were still editing and it was not the final runtime.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will release in theaters on December 13.
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