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Amazon’s Rings of Power is in development for Season 4 with preproduction this fall and filming targeted for early 2027, ahead of November’s Season 3 premiere.
Amazon Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is moving forward on a fourth season, with preproduction targeted for this fall and filming slated to begin in early 2027.
The fourth season is not yet officially greenlit. But Amazon’s commitment to a five-season run, originally negotiated with the Tolkien Estate when the streamer acquired the TV rights in 2017, has the production team treating Season 4 as a near-certainty.
The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive on the Season 4 production schedule and Amazon’s stated viewership numbers reports the series has drawn over 185 million viewers worldwide, per the streamer, making it one of the platform’s highest-performing originals.
The viewership claims have heft. Season 1 was Prime Video’s largest series launch ever; Season 2 debuted atop the Nielsen Streaming Top 10 in 2024.
Season 3 arrives first. The next chapter premieres November 11 on Prime Video and jumps the timeline forward, landing the story at the height of the War of the Elves and Sauron, as the Dark Lord seeks to craft the One Ring.
Wikipedia’s production breakdown of Season 3, including its UK filming and director slate details the third season’s structure: showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay wrote four of the eight episodes alongside Justin Doble, with Charlotte Brändström, Sanaa Hamri, and Stefan Schwartz directing.
The cast keeps growing. New for Season 3 are Andrew Richardson as a series regular, with Zubin Varla and Adam Young recurring. Their roles have not been officially announced.
The Rings of Power adapts material from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth appendices, focusing on the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of the novel The Lord of the Rings. The series carries at least a $1 billion production commitment across its planned five seasons, making it the most expensive television series ever made.
Amazon’s commitment was structured around a five-season plan from the start. ScreenRant’s coverage of the Season 4 development and where Season 3 fits in the five-year arc notes that Season 3 marks the franchise’s midpoint. A formal Season 4 renewal is likely to arrive shortly after Season 3 begins airing, if early performance holds.
The broader Lord of the Rings movement is large. Warner Bros.‘s Third Age film slate is heating up alongside the Rings of Power Second Age work, creating two parallel franchises pulling from different Tolkien material.
The next feature, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, is scheduled for December 17, 2027. Andy Serkis directs and reprises his Gollum role. Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood return as Gandalf and Frodo, with Jamie Dornan stepping into the role of Aragorn.
The film is set between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, tracking Aragorn and Gandalf’s race to find Gollum before Sauron’s forces do. It’s the first LOTR film since The Hobbit trilogy ended in 2014.
Peter Jackson is also developing another film. The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, announced in March, is set decades after The Return of the King and pulls in unused Fellowship chapters. Stephen Colbert is co-writing the script with his son Peter McGee and Philippa Boyens.
Jackson has separately told Deadline that he and Warner Bros. are in conversation with the Tolkien Estate about adapting The Silmarillion, the previously unavailable mythology compendium. “There’s a lot more Tolkien writing that would actually make great movies,” he said.
The Rings of Power Season 3 premieres November 11. Season 4, by Amazon’s current planning, lands in 2028.
