Japanese animator and director Kenji Kamiyama made his Annecy debut in the company of Andy Serkis on Tuesday with a 20-minute preview of upcoming anime feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
The extract was greeted with an enthusiastic response by the animation crowd jammed into the French festival’s 1000-set Grand Bonlieu auditorium.
Serkis, whose career will forever be entwined with JRR Tolkien’s fantasy classic through his Gollum role in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, is not directly involved in the anime feature but traveled to Annecy to introduce the footage and moderate a panel after the screening. “You are the first people to see this,” said Serkis.
Hailing from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros Animation, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim delves into a short episode in Tolkien’s original work around the war between Rohan and the Dunlendings, focusing on the daughter of Rohan king Helm Hammerhand, a lone survivor of the carnage.
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