Amazon will air the first episode of the series "The Lord of the Rings" in September 2022

The big-budget series

, based on JRR Tolkien's fantasy saga, will be released worldwide from September 2, 2022, Amazon said Monday, which hopes to compete with

. Amazon, which acquired the television rights to this cult work in 2017, for an estimated sum of $ 250 million, said in a statement that the "shooting of the first season (had) ended today (Monday) in New Zealand ".

Set in Middle-earth and taking some iconic characters of the saga, the series starts with unpublished adventures taking place "in a period of relative peace, thousands of years before the events of the books

and

of JRR Tolkien, ”Amazon Studios added. 

On September 2, 2022, a new adventure begins.

pic.twitter.com/uc92woy4MH

- Amazon Prime Video France (@PrimeVideoFR) August 2, 2021

The episodes of the first season will be broadcast week after week, said the group, which released a first image of the series Monday on social networks.

The cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, known for her role in the

series

, and Robert Amarayo, who played in

, which has become in eight seasons a monument of the fantasy genre. 

Another heavyweight for Amazon

With this adaptation over several seasons of Tolkien's literary phenomenon, already successfully resumed in cinema in the 2000s, Amazon hopes to score points in the merciless battle waged by its distribution platform Prime Video, against Netflix and Disney in particular.

The American giant founded by Jeff Bezos acquired at the end of May, for 8.45 billion dollars, the almost century-old Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which allowed it to add great classics such as

to its repertoire.

or

.