The War of the Rohirrim trailer brings Lord of the Rings into the anime age

So much has happened to Warner Bros. Pictures since The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim was fast-tracked into development in June 2021. Three years later, the studio is now a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery, a company that has rewired itself a dozen times, often at the cost of its animation business.

But the creative team behind The War of the Rohirrim — which includes Adult Swim and Toonami creative director Jason DeMarco as a producer — fought on, and this December, we’re getting a feature-length animated Lord of the Rings film. Good news: the first trailer for the film looks gorgeous.

Drawing from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings appendices, The War of the Rohirrim dials back the clock 200-ish years to Helm Hammerhand, the king of Rohan, and his daughter Hèra as they take on an army of wild Dunlendings bros. Produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), the finished product looks a wee bit bigger than anything we got from the (good in its own way!) 1978 Lord of the Rings, with all due respect to Ralph Bakshi.

This is just the beginning of a revival of Lord of the Rings from Warner Bros., which is probably feeling some pressure from its corporate overlords to make good on this instrumental bit of IP. Announced in May, Andy Serkis will return to direct and star in a new live-action Lord of the Rings film, again with Jackson’s approval (and key collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens working on the screenplay).

But can The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim break through with the masses? Anime films have been popping up more and more in the U.S. box office top 10, and data suggests audiences are ready for a studio to deliver on the scale of adult theatrical animation. We’ll know if Kamiyama and the team deliver when the movie arrives Dec. 13.