That’s a lot of pressure for showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne. They’re dealing with the high expectations by placing all of their trust in J. R.R. Tolkien, focusing on making the show as true to the books as possible. When a reporter at the Television Critic Association’s press tour on Friday noted that the show was “vaguely connected” to Tolkien’s books, the showrunners pushed back (via The Hollywood Reporter).
“I just want to sort of quibble with the ‘vaguely connected,’” said Patrick McKay. “We don’t feel that way. We feel like deep roots of this show are in the books and in Tolkien. And if we didn’t feel that way, we’d all be terrified to sit up here. We feel that this story isn’t ours. It’s a story we’re stewarding that was here before us and was waiting in those books to be on Earth. We don’t feel ‘vaguely connected.’ We feel deeply, deeply connected to those folks and work every day to even be closer connected. That’s really how we think about it.”
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“We think about [Tolkien], his life’s work was creating this world. This is Tolkien’s Middle Earth and regions beyond Middle Earth and we just wanted to be true to that,” he added. “Tolkien’s work is endlessly applicable across cultures and across across times, and we feel really grateful to be able to bring it to life in our time.”
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