Christopher Lee back as Saruman in new Lord Of The Rings film thanks to archival recordings

Christopher Lee will appear on screen one last time as Saruman in a new Lord Of The Rings film.

The first Lord of the Rings anime movie, The War of Rohirrim, will come to cinemas on December 13, taking place before the events of the original Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Saruman will appear in the film using archival recordings of Lee’s line readings.

Philippa Boyens, a longtime collaborator of Peter Jackson’s and co-writer of The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, spoke to TheOneRign.net at New York ComicCon, where she spoke with TheOneRing.net about the way they used recordings of Lee from when he was alive, with no AI assistance at all. Lee died in 2015 at the age of 93.

“We went into his [recordings], I got to go back and hear his voice, not just doing his lines, but talking to us as we were recording him,” Boyens said.

“We based [his performance on The War of Rohirrim] on a line from The Hobbit, which is ‘are you in need of assistance my lady?’, a version of that line. We can see how many takes he did of that, can we use it, can we find a new read on it, and change it up a little bit… but it is an authentic bit of Christopher Lee performance.”

The team did seek permission from Lee’s widow Gitte, who has since died, to include the old recordings of him. For a while, it was unclear if it’d be possible to find a line from The Hobbit that would work for the anime, so they did look for a sound-a-like.

“Now I know the internet’s going to say there’s a million people who could have done Chris Lee’s voice, but you know what? I don’t think so. I’m so glad we used his own voice,” said Boyens.

In other news, Boyens has also confirmed earlier this month that spin-off The Hunt For Gollum will not be split into two films.

The upcoming film, which will be directed by Gollum himself Andy Serkis, was announced earlier this year, and rumours have since been swirling about how the story will be told. This included the notion that the movie will be split into two parts, which originated from an interview with Gandalf actor Sir Ian McKellen.

Boyens has since set the record straight in an interview with Empire. “I can tell you definitively it isn’t two films!” she said. “That was a genuine misunderstanding that happened because we’ve begun to work, conceptually, on two different live-action films. The first being The Hunt For Gollum, the second one still to be confirmed.”

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