The Lord of the Rings the franchise is set to return to its animated roots with the highly anticipated anime film, The Rohirrim War. The film is scheduled for release on December 13, 2024.

Kenji Kamiyama, known for his work in Blade Runner: Black Lotuswill direct the film, with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh serving as executive producers.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will feature the first female protagonist in the franchise's history, Hèra.

Hèra, voiced by Gaia Wise, is the daughter of Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), the legendary King of Rohan.

The film will last 2 hours and 30 minutes.

The film still can be seen below:

Producer Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote the scripts for Peter Jackson's live-action Lord of the Rings films, explained how Hèra came to be in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Intrigued by an unnamed female character in Tolkien's writings, Boyens and screenwriter Phoebe Gittins fleshed her out, giving her a name and a voice.

“In the appendices from which the story is drawn, we have these male characters drawn quite interestingly, and then we have this young female character who is never named—and that was really interesting to me. We know Helm has a daughter, and we know she was central to the conflict that unfolded. But I, and especially screenwriter Phoebe Gittins, were drawn to her. We felt the weight of being that unnamed daughter, which immediately piqued our interest: Who was she? How did she live?”

Gaia Wise described Hèra as a fierce and complex young woman, drawing comparisons to Hayao Miyazaki's heroines rather than more traditional Tolkien characters such as Arwen and Éowyn.

Additionally, Boyens also revealed the reason for creating the film in anime format.

“I immediately felt it would work for anime because it's very character-driven and also contained within its own world. It touches on certain things that work really well with Japanese storytelling.”

During the Annecy Animation Festival, the film's co-producer Jason DeMarco spoke about the challenge of fusing the Lord of the Rings franchise with the world of anime.

“We didn't want to create an animated version of a Peter Jackson film. Our goal was to create a Kenji Kamiyama anime that existed within that universe. Achieving this required a delicate balance between two distinct filmmaking styles that didn't typically intersect in this way.”

In addition to Gaia Wise and Bryan Cox, the film will feature:

• Luke Pasqualino as Wulf
• Miranda Otto as Éowyn and Narrator

The cast also includes Lorraine Ashbourne, Yazdan Qafouri, Benjamin Wainwright, Laurence Ubong Williams, Shaun Dooley, Michael Wildman, Jude Akuwudike, Bilal Hasna and Janine Duvitski.

Source: Weekly Entertainment, The Hollywood Reporter