The Annecy Film Festival “second look” at The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has just concluded and reactions are starting to trickle out.
It sounds like a lot of people were quite impressed. Variety described the footage as “epic” and stated that the showing received “thunderous applause”.
Screendaily probably has the most comprehensive report so far and has the news from Philippa Boyens that Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson are on board as executive producers.
“They’ve been huge supporters of this film from the very beginning; they’ve stayed in the background a little, but I’m proud to reveal that they’ve been with us all along and are in fact our executive producers.
“They wanted to stay in the background because Peter in particular wanted to give Kenji the space to find his own way into the film,” added Boyens, who produces The War Of The Rohirrim with Joseph Chou.
Warner Bros/New Line screened 20 minutes of the film to the Annecy audience. It was followed by a panel hosted by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Jackson’s Rings trilogy, with Boyens, Kamiyama, Chou and executive producer Jason DeMarco present.
“We did not want to make an animated version of a Peter Jackson film,” said DeMarco. “We wanted to make a Kenji Kamiyama animated feature film that lives within that world. That’s a difficult task that requires a lot of delicate balancing between two types of filmmaking that haven’t collided like this before.”
Here’s a quick selection of instant reactions and good ol’ hot takes.
A super exciting event and incredible audience reaction. Six months to go! #waroftherohirrim @stephengallaghermusic
@Pin3hot on Instagram
By Ilúvatar, THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM looks stellar.
@RafaelMotamayor on Twitter
Seen 20 minutes of #WaOofTheRohirrim. Reservations about the animation. hot for the story. It comes out in December, the old-fashioned way.
@CloneWeb on Twitter
Had the pleasure of seeing a sneak peak of The Lords of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Honestly it’s absolutely stunning and I can’t wait for it to be released in cinemas. #JosephatAnnecy #AnnecyFestival #LOTR #Anime
@JosephYoung on Twitter
Animation style of ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM’ is very much like Japanese anime & ‘CASTLEVANIA.’
@NexusPointNews on Twitter
I’ll continue to update these as more information comes in.
