Sir Ian McKellen wants in on Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series

Sir Ian McKellen is a screen legend, and playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film franchise is some of his proudest work.

As a result of that, should anyone be altogether surprised that there’d be a demand for him to appear in the Amazon TV series? The one thing that is somewhat surprising here is that he is the person who seems to be creating said demand. Per Digital Spy, McKellen stated during a BBC Two interview with Graham Norton that he’d be down to reprise his role as the character in the upcoming project. When he was first asked what he would think about there being another Gandalf, he responded soon after with “What do you mean, another Gandalf?”

Following that, Sir Ian made his pitch abundantly clear:

“I haven’t said yes because I haven’t been asked. But are you suggesting that someone else is going to play it? Gandalf is over 7000 years old, so I’m not too old.”

Of course, pretty much everyone in their right mind would probably be very much for the idea of seeing Sir Ian McKellen reprise this role — yet, the question that remains is whether or not this new Lord of the Rings project would even feature the Gandalf character. Early indications are that this will be set before the events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and while it will be based on Tolkien source material that doesn’t quite mean that it will demand a certain wizard.

If nothing else, though, wouldn’t producers be completely out of their mind to not bring McKellen on board? If an actor of his caliber wants to be a part of your project, it feels almost like common knowledge to let him be a part of the project. Even if it is is just a brief cameo, a little bit of Sir Ian McKellen does probably go a long way towards giving your idea a little bit more credence.

This project, no matter who appears in it, is still far too early in the process to announce casting. It’ll be a miracle if this starts streaming in 2019; a 2020 or later released ate seems to be a little more likely.

Are there any characters/actors from the Lord of the Rings films that you’d like to see in the series? Share in the comments!

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