The tricky thing about wizards from the Lord of the Rings universe is that they’re immortal and can live for thousands of years. Though we don’t expect to meet much familiar characters in the animated Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, it looks like we’ll be seeing a familiar face with Saruman the White who was played by Christopher Lee in the films.
What’s crazy though, is that Christopher Lee will actually be reprising the role of the White Wizard in the movie—and this is thanks to archival recordings from The Hobbit. This was confirmed by writer Philippa Boyens at the New York Comic-Con (via The One Ring):
“We went into his records, I got to go back and hear his voice. Not just doing the lines, but talking to us as we were recording. We based it on a line from The Hobbit which is, ‘are you in need of assistance my lady?’ something—like a version of that line.”
The line actually comes from this scene in Desolation of Smaug where Galadriel and the rest of the immortals take on the Nazgul:
I’ll admit, I wasn’t a fan of when they decided to “Frankenstein” Carrie Fisher’s performance in The Force Awakens and repurpose it for The Rise of Skywalker, but I would be more forgiving if it was just for the voice and the project was animated.
Boyens did say that they thought of getting someone to sound like Christopher Lee, but it’s great that they found some way to bring him back without having to use some kind of AI trickery. I guess Corey Burton will have to just stick to Clone Wars for now.
Catch Christopher Lee in Lord of the Rings: War for the Rohirrim when it comes to cinemas on Dec. 11.
