Game Of Thrones might have wrapped up for good with season eight, but writer Bryan Cogman isn’t done with fantasy worlds just yet.
Cogman, who also served as an executive producer on the series, has boarded the upcoming Lord Of The Rings TV series, according to Variety’s sources.
He joins writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay who are at the helm of this mammoth project, based on the books by JRR Tolkien.
It apparently comes as part of his ‘overall deal’ with Amazon which was struck in September.
Cogman sounds like the perfect man for the job, having extensive knowledge of George RR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series. He also served as assistant to Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss.
He penned the the second episode of season eight, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms.
The Amazon series is reportedly set to begin filming in Scotland later this year.
According to the Daily Record, a new studio space in Leith, Edinburgh will be home to filming on the series if construction on the facility is completed in time.
A source told the site: ‘Lord Of The Rings producers are hoping to start filming at the new studio from about August to November.’
It’s believed production will resume at the facility from next March, and will last another three months.
And it’s set to be an expensive project with one of the biggest budgets in television history, costing a reported $1billion (£710million), 3.5 times more expensive than the film trilogy from Peter Jackson.
Elijah Wood, who played Frodo Baggins in Jackson’s films, admitted he thought the size of the budget was ‘crazy’.
He told IndieWire: ‘That wouldn’t have happened back then because the Tolkien estate didn’t know what they had as much as they do now.
‘It’s all a product of the world they live in. They know now what they have, they know how lucrative it is.’
‘The thing that was wild about Lord of the Rings was that it felt like an independent movie, made by New Line [Cinema] in New Zealand,’ Elijah continued.
‘It was kind of tucked away. If that movie was made now, it would be under very different circumstances, and a much larger machine.
‘That doesn’t mean it can’t have soul. It’s just harder to do that.’
Lord of The Rings is expected to start shooting in 2020 and arrive on Amazon Prime the following year.
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