The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim footage greeted with thunderous applause

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is one of several new Lord of the Rings projects coming to a theater or TV set near you. This one is an animated movie set a couple centuries before the events of The Lord of the Rings proper, and involves a conflict between the horselords of Rohan and the wild Dunlendings. It's something of an origin story for the fortress of Helm's Deep, which featured in a spectacular battle in Peter Jackson's 2002 movie The Two Towers.

The War of the Rohirrim will star Succession's Brian Cox as the voice of Helm Hammerhand, the king of Rohan, and Gaia Wise as his daughter Princess Héra, who will be the main point of focus. Wise compares her more to Nausicaä from Hayao Miyazaki's classic film Valley of the Wind than to the leading ladies of The Lord of the Rings. “She would lay down her life for her people,” Wise said. “Comparing her to Arwen and Éowyn, they’re already fully formed women. What I loved about Hèra is she’s fierce, she’s complex, she’s rebellious.” Miranda Otto, who played the Rohan shield-maiden Éowyn in Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, will serve as narrator.

The producers debuted the first 20 minutes of the movie at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, which is going on right now. Per Variety, the scene involves a dispute at a council meeting that goes off the rails and ends the Dunlending Wulf incensed and swearing vengeance. The footage received "thunderous applause" from a packed room.

“There is such power to the story,” said director Kenji Kamiyana, who before this has worked on animated series like Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Also on hand was Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy; he'll reprise that role in The Hunt for Gollum, a new live-action movie he'll also direct. “The fans are going to go nuts for this,” Serkis said of The War of the Rohirrim.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will be in theaters in November. That means we'll be watching it not long after the end of the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which premieres on Amazon in August. The Hunt for Gollum will be along later. And did I mention that there's a Lord of the Rings musical on the way?

Are we ready to spend this much more time with the men, elves, dwarves, etc of Middle-earth? The Lord of the Rings-palooza begins later this year.

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h/t Entertainment Weekly