Amazon Prime will soon premiere one of the most anticipated new TV series in recent years: “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which launches Friday on the streaming platform.
One of the major names to help make the series a reality, however, is a guy who 20 years ago was a senior at Hampden Academy. Justin Doble, a Newburgh native, is an executive producer on the show and co-wrote at least one episode.
Doble, now 37, moved to Los Angeles in his 20s and worked on the TV shows “Fringe” and “Into the Badlands” before getting his big break working on another blockbuster series: “Stranger Things” on Netflix, which recently completed its fourth season and which Netflix says was its most watched show ever.
In a 2017 interview with the Bangor Daily News, Doble recalled the fact that he’s from Stephen King country was one of the things that helped him secure the job with “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer.
“In one of our first meetings I told them about the fact that he taught at my high school when he was writing ‘Carrie,’ and that I used to work at Shaw’s and Miller Drug and would see him around there all the time,” Doble said. “I think that helped me get my foot in the door.”
When Doble started work on “Stranger Things” in 2015, no one had any idea the show would turn into a global phenomenon. In contrast, “The Rings of Power,” based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, is a well-established franchise in a world people are familiar with from the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” films.
The series is set thousands of years before the events in “The Lord of the Rings,” in Middle-earth’s Second Age, when men ruled the island kingdom of Numenor, dwarves ruled Khadad-dum (Moria, in the books) and elves remained a powerful force in the world. With the forging of the rings of power, however, what was once a peaceful era for the world turns to war.
The series is now, officially, the most expensive of all time, with a reported $715 million spent by the studio on eight episodes.
Though Doble did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with the BDN, and Amazon has tightly controlled press surrounding the show, Doble in 2017 talked about a development deal with Amazon he’d signed that year. He couldn’t say at the time what the deal was for, but said he was excited.
“If you make a list of all the best novels of all time, they own the rights to a lot of them,” Doble said. “It’s extremely daunting but also super, super exciting.”
The first two episodes of “The Rings of Power” premiere on Amazon on Friday.
