Los Angeles, CA – Amazon Studios has announced that Orlando Bloom, break-out star of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will appear in the next season of the The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Credit: Samir Hussein, Wireimage
Developers J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay confirmed that Bloom will appear in the second half of the season as Oropher – the grandfather of Legolas.
“J. D. was chatting with Orlando at an industry event and Orlando said that he wished he could step back into Middle-earth because he’d had so much fun the first time around,” said Patrick. “We put our heads together and came up with a way to have him play his own grandfather. This actually works well as Orlando is 25 years older than he was when the Fellowship of the Ring was filmed. Therefore, he’ll bring more depth and gravity to Oropher.”
Oropher was a Sindarin elf who led his people north to lands around the Mountains of Mirkwood. His motive was to move out of range of the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm and avoid the threat of Mordor. If the series continues through to the Battle of Dagorlad, we’ll get to see Oropher’s final battle and death.
Patrick wouldn’t give details of Oropher’s story arc but a source told TheOneRing.net that the character will be involved in the Silmaril storyline.
A separate source claims that Elijah Wood has also been approached for a cameo. However, John Rhys-Davies has flat-out refused to be involved in The Rings of Power because he “wouldn’t wear those bloody prosthetics again for all the jewels in Moria. Ishkhaqwi ai durugnul!”.
If you’re a fan of large scale pieces, and have been wanting The Lord of the Rings to enter that collecting space, then this is going to make your day! The folks over at Infinity Studio X Penguin Toys are now entering the frame. The first 1:2 scale statue from their new The Lord of the Rings line is none other than Legolas himself. Legolas comes in two editions: Ultimate with a price of $2,904(USD) and an edition size of 250 pieces; while the Premium is $1,734(USD) with an edition size of 600 pieces. Both versions ship next year and can be ordered from our friends at Sideshow.
Our next review is going to take a look at the two most recently delivered figures from Iron Studio’s 1:10 The Lord of the Rings statue line. These awesome pieces capture the sequence we see at Balin’s tomb in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. So far fans can snag Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Armored Orc, Swordsman Orc, Archer Orc, and of course the Cave Troll. As you will see in this review, they’ve done an excellent job of capturing Middle-earth’s odd couple, Legolas and Gimli, as well as creating a couple of great collectibles. If you’re a fan with limited space and budget, then these collectibles will be right up your ally. Currently, Legolas and Gimli are listed as in stock from our friends at Sideshow, for $140 each. The rest of the line set is currently on pre-order.
The awesome folks at Diamond Select Toys were cool enough to send us something pretty sweet to take a look at, and let you all know what we think. As we’ve mentioned in the past, they are doing a great action figure line in the same scale, for those who collected the Toy Biz figure line when the movies were out. These figures of course are updated, and created with today’s technologies; and it shows in how cool they are. The folks at DST sent us what started out as an unlikely friendship in Legolas and Gimli. These figures are out now, and come in at a price of $29.99. If you’re like me and have a copy of their 2021 SDCC Exclusive, they’ve let folks know what the packaging will look like and you can find that here. They’ve also announced a solo Gollum figure, and shown all the cool stuff it comes with along with a price; there’s a link to the blog post mentioning that here.
If you haven’t been following our friends on Weta Workshop or our own social media accounts then you might have missed the pre-order for the new Legolas and Gimli statue. This great looking statue was sculpted by the super talented Jane Wenley, and it continues the great series of statues from Amon Hen. Legolas and Gimli is available to pre-order for $699 and will ship in March/April of next year. The key part of this is the edition size of these two characters will be set based on the number of people who want one. So in these last 24 hours, get your order in, because it’s likely there won’t be one to go around.
As we told you back in March the awesome folks at Diamond Select Toys has reintroduced collectors to action figures from The Lord of the Rings. The first set from that launch is now for sale and fans can go snag two members of the Fellowship that created a fantastic friendship. The first two figures are none other than Legolas and Gimli. Both figures are in 7 inch scale with 16 points of articulation. Slated to come out in the fall you can buy these figures seperatly from various retailers for $25 or from Diamond Select Toys themselves for $50.
