Lord of the Rings: What you need to know about Amazon's new show

If it's been too long since elves and hairy-toed Hobbits have been on your screen, fret no more: a new Lord of the Rings TV show is coming.

Although we've known for a while that something has been in the works, not much information has been released until recently.

Here are five things you need to know about the show…

There are maps

Yep, lots of maps. Since February, Amazon (who's producing the show) have been releasing images of Middle-Earth's landscape on social media. They also tweeted a quote from the books' author: '"I wisely started with a map" - J.R.R. Tolkien' before following up with some lines from the first book.

Aside from that they've kept pretty hush, leaving fans lots of room to guess.

It's a prequel

Although an official plot or story hasn't been released yet, the show-runnrers have said that the new series will be set in a time known as the Age of Númenor.

It's also known as the Second Age, and it's before the Fellowship of the Ring.

Gandalf might want in

No characters have been announced for the show yet, but given when it's set, Gandalf might be the only one from the films who'd be the right age to feature.

When Ian McKellen (who's featured in every one of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films) spoke to Graham Norton about the idea of a different actor playing the role, he insisted that he hadn't been asked yet but said 'Gandalf is over 7,000 years old, so I'm not too old!'

That was in 2017 so we can hope there have been some wizardly conversations since then!

Peter Jackson isn't involved

Jackson directed the six films we've seen so far, and there were rumours that he'd been involved in the series in some way, but that's not the case.

He explained at the New York Comic Con that he isn't involved in the series, but that he's excited to see it as a viewer rather than a director, allowing him to watch 'someone else's take on the Tolkien world'.

It's a while off

Tolkien's world has been replicated many times over the years including a cartoon film version in 1978

Amazon shelled out $250 million to buy the rights to create the series in 2017, but that came with a catch - that production had to start within two years of signing the deal.

Despite that, big shows like this aren't the easiest to cobble together, so you might need to wait until 2021 for the series to appear on TV.