It looks like Uncle Benjen has found a new gig after giving his life to save Jon Snow a few years ago on Game Of Thrones. According to Deadline, Joseph Mawle—who played the aforementioned Star relative—is going to play the main villain in Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings show. He’ll be a character named Oren, which (according to some cursory Googling) doesn’t seem to mean anything in the larger context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories, but there’s always a chance that fake names are being used in a show like this (“Oren” does sound a bit like “Sauron,” but this show is going to take place long before people from the original books show up so maybe that’s irrelevant).
Interestingly, Mawle won’t be the only Thrones veteran heading to Lord Of The Rings, though he’ll probably be the only one that people recognize. Game Of Thrones executive producer Bryan Cogman is also making the jump, a move that almost certainly has something to do with HBO’s decision not to move forward with his Game Of Thrones prequel pitch. Hey, if you’ve got fantasy stuff on your résumé, you might as well put it to use.
Anyway, Mawle’s Oren is going to be facing off against good guys Will Poulter and Markella Kavenagh, who are playing characters named Beldor and Tyra, and production will start in New Zealand in a few months.