When Amazon plunked down about $1B for their Lord of the Rings TV series, it came with the expectation of multiple seasons. You don’t spend that kind of money on a limited event series, right? So it should come as no surprise that Amazon has gone ahead and approved a second season before production has officially begun. The real news here is what comes next.
Deadline reports The Lord of the Rings has been renewed for a second season, despite the first season still being in the pre-production phase. This is all part of an interesting, somewhat unusual path that has been laid out to shorten the gap between seasons, and avoid the extensive waits Game of Thrones fans often had to endure.
So the way things will go is that the first two episodes of season one will be completed by director J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), followed by a four or five month hiatus so writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to script the bulk of season two. The hiatus after a couple of episodes is fairly standard so as to give a new show a look to see what works going forward.
This should allow fans to get their hands on Season 2 episodes fairly quickly, especially if Amazon decides to shoot both seasons back-to-back just as Peter Jackson did with his Lord of the Rings movies.