“It’s a story about journeys,” says Nicholas Hoult (The Favourite, Mad Max: Fury Road) in the trailer of Tolkien, a biopic about English novelist JRR Tolkien. “It’s about inventions. It’s about potent magic, magic beyond anything anyone has ever felt before.”
Directed by Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski, the Fox Searchlight production focuses on the author’s formative years “as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school” and the onset of World War I that “threatens to tear the ‘fellowship’ apart”, according to the official synopsis. The film examines how these early experiences inspired the writer’s path-breaking Middle Earth fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (which have been adapted into successful films by Peter Jackson).
The film stars Hoult as Tolkien and Lily Collins as his wife, Edith Bratt. The cast also includes Colm Meaney, Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson. Tolkien is scheduled to be released on May 10.