Sir Ian Mckellen wants to play Gandalf again

Ian McKellen played the role in Peter Jackson directed The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.

British actor Sir Ian McKellen has said that he would like to take up the mantle of Gandalf again in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series, though he admits he has not been consulted yet. Amazon had bought the global television rights to JRR Tolkien’s fantasy epic. Lord of the Rings has already been made into film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson and went on to earn 3 billion dollars and a staggering 17 Academy Awards, with the final film winning 11 alone.

McKellen played the role of Gandalf both in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the prequel The Hobbit trilogy. In an interview with BBC Radio 2’s Graham Norton, McKellen was asked if he will find it annoying to have another Gandalf, to which he quipped, “What do you mean, another Gandalf?

“I haven’t said yes because I haven’t been asked. But are you suggesting that someone else is going to play it? Gandalf is over 7000 years old, so I’m not too old,” he added.

Amazon’s adaptation of Tolkien’s stories is almost certainly to be super-expensive. Experts have said that Amazon wants its own Game of Thrones. a prestige series capitalising on the popularity of the franchise. Reports indicate that instead of adapting the main story itself, makers will use other, previously unexplored storylines. Tolkien did not just write Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit but also wrote copious backstories of different races of people, about Morgoth, the Dark Lord before Sauron, the creation of the world of Middle-earth, and so on.