Amazon's Lord Of The Rings Show Gets A Game Of Thrones Veteran

Art is a circle. Just as life imitates art and art imitates life, art also imitates art. Game Of Thrones was obviously heavily inspired by JR Tolkien's work - particularly the key themes of Lord Of The Rings - so it's a pleasant completion of that circle to note that the new upcoming Lord Of The Rings TV show, which should fill the void for Thrones fans, will now have a key Thrones influence working on it.

According to Variety (and confirmed by George RR Martin on his own blog), Bryan Cogman - the third creator of Game Of Thrones who often gets overlooked but is the "third head of the dragon" in Martin's words - is now on board the huge Amazon TV project. He wrote and executive produced Game Of Thrones, so he's got considerable pedigree for this sort of spectacle fantasy show-making.

Cogman had been signed up by Amazon last year, but he hadn't officially been attached to LOTR - on which he will act as a creative consultant - until this announcement. He's basically Thrones royalty having written 11 episodes himself and produced more than 40. And if you're a disgruntled fan who was put off by season 8, the best news will be that the last episode he wrote was A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which was widely exalted as the best episode in years.

He had actually been set to lead a Thrones prequel too, but that project was one of the ones culled at the discussion stage, so HBO's loss is Amazon's gain. And while the Lord Of The Rings show is probably a long way off, it's hard not to be very excited by it all the same.