Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to type; The Lord of the Rings franchise is getting an anime movie. I’ll give you a second to re-read that sentence because I really do not want to type it again.
Entertainment website Deadline reported on Thursday, June 10th, that an anime movie for the classic fantasy series is being fast-tracked for a theatrical release by New Line and Warner Animation. The movie, titled The War of the Rohirrim, will take place in the world’s second age and focus on a character from the appendix, King of Rohan Helm Hammerhand. Taking place about 250 years before the events of the New Line movie trilogy, the story will tell the story of Helm’s Deep and a legendary battle that changes the landscape of Middle-earth.
While voice casting is currently underway, they revealed a few crew members in the initial announcement. Sola Entertainment will produce the animation with Kenji Kamiyama (Moribito, Eden of the East, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) serving as the director. Meanwhile, the script is being composed by the team of Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews.
When this news hit, I immediately went to my Twitter feed because I knew there was going to be some strong opinions being shared about this and I was not disappointed. While many fans are excited about Kamiyama being attached as the director (rightfully so, he’s done some amazing works in the past) others were less enthused by the choice of animation studio as Sola Entertainment has yet to really build any kind of real reputation within the community.
Established in 2009, we mostly know Sola at this point for low-quality CGI OVAs that went directly to video and were just as quickly forgotten about by fans around the world. While they’ve been attached to globally popular franchises including Neon Genesis Evangelion and Blade Runner, they’ve yet to produce anything that can be considered a breakout hit as far as I’m personally aware.
Additionally, I’m forced to ask the question why does this feature need to be anime to begin with? I’m not against a new animated Lord of the Rings film. I think it’s a fantastic idea and with a new live-action series set to hit Amazon Prime before the end of the year and Fellowship of the Ring celebrating 20 years, now is the perfect time to strike. But to take such a well-known western property and give it the anime treatment feels like such a needless bandwagon cash-grab move it makes me feel a little jaded towards the movie before I’ve even really learned much about it, which is not getting us off on the best foot.
It’s always possible that my initial misgivings will be totally erased by the time this movie actually hits theaters. My first gut reactions however tell me that I’d be much better off just pulling out my old copy of Record of Lodoss War and re-watching that instead of this, but as I said, I’m open to being proven wrong.
Source: Deadline
