Writers Reveal How They Managed to Adapt Two Pages from Tolkien’s Writings into a Whole Movie in ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim was released in the United States on December 13, 2024, and in addition to being the first official Lord of the Rings film since Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, the film is entirely original for a number of reasons. In the first place, it will be set in the past and will take a fresh look at Middle-earth. Secondly, it’s an anime movie, which is also a first for the franchise.

However, the movie is specific because it was based on a very small amount of content written by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, which means that the writers had to craft a whole story from just a couple of pages of content.

Screenwriters Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou recently sat down for a talk with Mashable and they revealed more details about the writing process, how they changed and adapted Tolkien’s work, and how they managed to craft a whole movie based on very little material they had!

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an interesting take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. Instead of adapting a full novel, the film draws from just two pages of his Appendices. These pages cover the story of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary king of Rohan.

The story centers on Helm’s conflict with a rival lord, Freca. Freca wants his son, Wulf, to marry Helm’s daughter. Helm rejects the proposal, killing Freca with a single punch. This gives him the name Hammerhand. Wulf, furious, spends years gathering an army and eventually attacks Edoras. Helm and his people are forced to retreat to the Hornburg, where they endure a long siege.

To turn this into a full-length film, screenwriters Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou had to make some changes. They expanded on certain parts of the story while cutting others to make the narrative work. As a result, the film offers a deeper look at the events and characters involved in this piece of Middle-earth history, as Gittins said:

It’s Tolkien! The strength of his world-building means there’s always going to be a thread that pulls another thread that pulls another thread. We felt Tolkien really did place her at the heart of this conflict. It is her story in large part. A lot of this war is because of her. And once we got our heads around that, it became very exciting to see what we could do with this character, and see what we could bring to the table with her.

When you look at the text, you know the fate of Helm Hammerhand. You know it’s epic, and it’s tragic, and it’s iconic, but it didn’t really give us an ending. The value at stake, the Rohirrim, are still behind those walls in the Hornburg. You can’t just leave them there. So who can see this story through for us?

Source: Mashable

The answer to his was Héra, but she was not the only female character featured prominently in the movie, as Éowyn is also back, although in a different role:

We knew we would need to draw inspiration for [Héra] from somewhere, and we asked ourselves the question, ‘Who would have paved the way for the likes of Éowyn?’ So it just felt like a really natural fit, given that we’d drawn so much inspiration from Éowyn to Héra, that we use Éowyn as a narrative device as well.

You can follow the link to read the whole interview, but if you want to experience the story in the best way possible, you should go to the theater and watch it!

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