We have known that there will be a reunion with Saruman in The Lord of the Rings: The Battle of the Rohirrim since the release of the trailer, in which the White Wizard was already seen. However, it was still uncertain who would lend his voice to Saruman – especially since Christopher Lee, who voiced Saruman in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, died in 2015.
As has now become known, Christopher Lee will still return as Saruman. This is supposed to be done using a trick that fortunately has nothing to do with AI technologies.
Christopher Lee’s voice recordings are used for Saruman in Lord of the Rings: The Battle of the Rohirrim
As The Battle of Rohirrim screenwriter Philippa Boyens explained in an interview with The One Ring, she asked Christopher Lee’s wife Birgit Kroencke before her death Use of archive recordings Lees asked. Kroencke gave Boyens and the rest of the team her blessing:
[Kroencke] said what Peter [Jackson] felt in his heart, namely that Sir Christopher [Lee] would have wanted it that way. So we listened to his recordings, I got to go back there and hear his voice – not just how he reads his script lines, but also the way he talks to us when we were recording.
According to Boynes, a line from The Hobbit stood out, which could be used in a modified form for The Battle of the Rohirrim:
We based it on a line from The Hobbit that says, ‘Do you need help, Milady?’ It was a version of that line and we thought, okay, that’s a line he did a lot of takes of. Can we use them? Can we put a new spin on it and change it up a bit? And our brilliant team did it. But it is an authentic piece of Christopher Lee’s performancewhich is based on this line.
Even though the Lord of the Rings team had considered casting an actor with a similar vocal tone to play Saruman in The Battle of the Rohirrim, Boyens says the archival recordings still allowed them to use Christopher Lee’s voice.
When is The Lord of the Rings: The Battle of the Rohirrim coming to the cinema?
There will be a reunion with Christopher Lee as Saruman from this December 12, 2024when The Lord of the Rings: The Battle of the Rohirrim hits theaters. Until then, you can read everything you need to know about the fantasy film here.
Podcast for Lord of the Rings fans: Rings of Power finale and what awaits us in season 3
After 8 episodes, the second season of Amazon’s big fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has come to an end. Middle-earth fans Esther from Moviepilot and Sebastian from Filmstarts draw conclusions after the grand finale and discuss highlights and missteps of the return.
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Did the wizard reveal succeed? Does the great battle deliver what it promised? And what do Sauron, Galadriel and Co. plan to do next as we look at Season 3 theories?