Christopher Lee returns to voice Saruman in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, however this isn’t an A.I. state of affairs.

We knew that Saruman would seem in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, however we didn’t know who could be voicing the White Wizard. Turns out, none apart from Sir Christopher Lee will return to voice Sarumon in The War of the Rohirrim. As Lee sadly died in 2015, you may count on this to be an A.I. state of affairs, however worry not, the manufacturing has made use of archival recordings of Lee.

While talking with The One Ring, Lord of the Rings screenwriter Philippa Boyens mentioned they reached out to Birgit Kroencke (Lee’s widow who died earlier this 12 months), who gave her blessing. “[Kroencke] said the thing that I think that Peter [Jackson] felt in his heart, which was that actually Sir Christopher would’ve wanted this.” Boyens mentioned. “So we went into his information, I bought to return and listen to his voice–not simply doing the traces, however speaking to us as we had been recording him.“

Boyens continued, “We based it on a line from The Hobbit, which is, ‘Are you in need of assistance, my lady?’ [It was] a version of that line, and we thought, okay, that’s a line we can see how many takes he did of that. Can we use it? Can we find a new read on it and change it up a little bit? And our brilliant guys did that. But it is an authentic bit of Christoper Lee performance that it’s based on that line.” She added that they weren’t positive if they may even discover the line, in order that they did look into casting a sound-alike. However, she was grateful that they had been in a position to let Lee “use his own voice” in the function.

The official synopsis for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim: “Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” tells the destiny of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan. A sudden assault by Wulf, a intelligent and ruthless Dunlending lord in search of vengeance for the demise of his father, forces Helm and his individuals to make a daring final stand in the historic stronghold of the Hornburg—a mighty fortress that can later come to be recognized as Helm’s Deep. Finding herself in an more and more determined state of affairs, Héra, the daughter of Helm, should summon the will to guide the resistance towards a lethal enemy intent on their complete destruction.“

The voice forged is led by Brian Cox (Succession) as Helm Hammerhand, the mighty King of Rohan; Gaia Wise (A Walk in the Woods) as his daughter Héra; and Luke Pasqualino (Snowpiercer) as Wulf. Miranda Otto reprises her function as Éowyn, the Shieldmaiden of Rohan who serves as the story’s narrator. The War of the Rohirrim will hit theaters on December thirteenth.