The Rings of Power Interview Director J.A. Bayona: I’m Shooting the F*cking Lord of the Rings

Last year, Prime Video’s series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power took . Tolkien fans somewhere they’d never seen before: the Second Age. The show, which became the streaming service’s most-watched series ever, takes place thousands of years before the fellowship formed, and Rings of Power director, J.A. Bayona (The Impossible), was tasked with finding and setting that tone at the helm of Episodes 1 and 2. Before Collider’s Q&A with cast and creatives following our LA screening, Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub spoke with Bayona about the challenges of such an ambitious project. With such a large and passionate fanbase, Rings of Power was a huge responsibility from the start. Bayona, a Tolkien fan himself, tells us that in order to bring this never-before-seen Second Age to life, he prepared by rereading the books, but also explains why he didn’t take influence from the beloved Peter Jackson trilogy. They talk about swiping sequences, the challenges faced to create Lord of the Rings in