Veteran Doctor Who director James Strong has signed up to helm J.R.R Tolkien biopic Middle Earth.
Strong is an experience and successful director with recent successes including Broadchurch and the Manchester United Munich air disaster drama United. His Doctor Who credits include Voyage of the Damned and Planet of the Dead along with Torchwood episode, Cyberwoman.
In Middle Earth, he’ll be working from a script by Angus Fletcher (whose credits include an upcoming adaptation of E.M. Forster’s The Longest Journey) which will chart his early life (So basically Tolkien Begins but with 98% less bats), exploring the inspiration behind the seminal The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
The story will follow Tolkien’s love affair with Edith Bratt, whom he later married. The couple lived happily in Oxford, surrounded by friends, but when war broke out in 1914 Tolkien embarked on four years of battle and hardship, an experience that influenced his Middle Earth stories.
As Den of Geek reports Fletcher’s script is based upon on materials he’s gathered about Tolkien ‘through six years of archival research and personal interviews’.
Much like The Lord of the Rings saga itself, we’ll have to wait a long time to see the end as there’s no news on casting but Middle Earth will be hitting the film markets next year.
