Warner Bros. has announced an anime prequel film based on the Lord of the Rings series. Titled The War of the Rohirrim, it takes place 250 years before the events of the main trilogy. It tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary ninth king of Rohan. The original series' director, Peter Jackson, will not return. However, his co-writer Philippa Boyens is working as a consultant for the film.
This news has only left fans with more questions than answers. The last film set in the world of Middle-Earth was 2014's The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Though box office returns more than recouped its budget, story-wise it ended the six-film saga on a rather mediocre note. Amazon's Lord of the Rings series is still on track to come out in 2021, though there's no confirmed date. So where does The War of the Rohirrim fit into all this? Is Warner Bros. just rushing it out to compete with Amazon, or is there actual passion behind the project?
Say what you want about Peter Jackson, but he had a love for Tolkien's world that few could equal. Even The Hobbit films had glimpses of what made his original forays into Middle-Earth so great. But the director of The War of the Rohirrim, Kenji Kamiyama, is no pushover himself. His work on the series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex turned him into something of an anime legend. He's probably one of the few people who could make a Lord of the Rings anime work. That said, another question fans have is: why anime? It's possible that that's just Warner Bros.'s way of standing out, making a statement. A marketing gimmick of sorts. But it seems like this isn't just a one-time thing. In fact, Warner Bros. may just be setting a precedent for anime spin-offs to become ordinary in the future.
In 2003, Warner Home Video released The Animatrix. It's a compilation of nine anime shorts that take place in the world of The Matrix. This was one of the first cases (if not the first case) of an anime based on a Hollywood movie. Considering that anime itself had inspired The Matrix, this was a pairing that at least made some sense. Sources place the budget of the film at about $15 million, and its home video sales at about $68 million. Those are fairly solid numbers considering how much the anime fandom has grown over the last twenty years.
Warner Bros. tried a similar tactic in 2008 with Gotham Knight, a direct-to-video anime anthology based on the Batman franchise. Again, with some notable exceptions, they were the only studio making these sorts of films. Miramax's Kill Bill: Volume 1 featured an anime sequence done by Production I.G., but that's about it. Most studios working with anime were trying to figure out ways to Americanize it without losing money. Warner Bros. also tried this, but their adaptation of Akira never got off the ground. And after flops like Dragonball Evolution, it was clear that that wasn't going to work out so well anyway. So Warner Bros. changed gears and set up Toonami, which created a larger audience for anime than ever before. And in 2017, they finally gave anime fans a glimpse of what was to come.
To promote Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. released a series of prequel shorts set in the universe of the film. Among them was an anime, Blade Runner Black Out 2022, which debuted on the streaming service Crunchyroll. Shinichirō Watanabe (creator of Cowboy Bebop) directed the short, which caught the attention of his fans. Then, in 2018, news broke of an anime series, Blade Runner: Black Lotus, coming to Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. And one of the big names attached to this project? None other than Kenji Kamiyama, the person who is now on board to direct the first-ever Middle-Earth anime.
So why are all these Warner Bros. franchises suddenly "branching out"? Part of it is due to the recent rise in the popularity of anime content on a global scale. But the announcement of a theatrical Lord of the Rings anime film, of all things, coincides with a particular event. Earlier this year, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train set the opening weekend record for any foreign-language film in North America. This is on top of it becoming the highest-grossing anime film of all time (with a whopping $500 million gross). Previously, Warner Bros.' anime spin-offs went straight to video. All of a sudden, they're planning to release one in theaters. The market is wide open, and soon, more and more studios are going to realize this.
The Lord of the Rings franchise isn't nearly as big as, say, the Wizarding World. And that's not to say it couldn't be; just that it hasn't expanded nearly as much. But what it does have is devotees. And if enough people turn up to see a Lord of the Rings anime, why not a Harry Potter anime? Anime films are far cheaper to produce, and now they've proven they can be box office draws too. It seems Warner Bros.'s plan is to start with the smaller franchises (such as Blade Runner), then expand accordingly. And if Warner Bros. can do it, why not Disney? Like any trend, if it holds its weight over time, it won't be long before everyone's jumping on the bandwagon.