The Rings of Power Showrunner Admits Lord of the Rings Spin-Off on Young Aragorn was Scrapped

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will be set thousands of years before the events in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels of the same name and it's set to be the most epic of prequel shows because we'll finally get to see what Sauron looked like before he forged the One Ring. However, there was a time when the spin-off series was set to take place a lot closer to the time of The Hobbit.

There were previous reports suggesting that the Lord of the Rings spin-off will focus on a young Aragorn. Interestingly, The Rings of Power co-showrunner J.D. Payne confirmed that this was originally considered but the idea was ultimately scrapped.

J.D. Payne recently spoke to Total Film magazine where he revealed that Amazon Prime Video passed on the show following the young Aragorn. In addition to that, there were several other Middle-earth television pitches that were declined.

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"When we first went up for the job, we were told there were literally dozens of other people who were also throwing their hat in the ring, and everyone was coming in with different things," Payne said.

"Amazon bought the rights to the trilogy, the appendices, and The Hobbit. They said the field was wide open – any story within that material, you could tell. So you had people pitching the Young Aragon show, or the Gimli spinoff, or other kinds of things," he added.

So why was the Aragorn series scrapped? Payne pointed out that it was about making Tolkien proud.

"They wanted to make something that felt worthy of Tolkien," he said. "And as we really thought about it, and culled through the material, and saw all different kinds of stories – that story of the Second Age, so the Dark Lord Sauron, and the Fall of Númenor, and the fight against Sauron at Mount Doom. That arc of the major Second Age events felt like such an amazing, untold story."

We're disappointed that there won't be an Aragorn spin-off but fans are still hoping that there is room for another Lord of the Rings series in the future.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere on Amazon on September 2, 2022.

Related: House of the Dragon Showrunners Talk About Competing Against Lord of the Rings Prequel The Rings of Power