War of the Rohirrim Used Christopher Lee’s Archives to Bring Him Back as Saruman

The new Lord of the Rings anime prequel War of the Rohirrim is already playing with a lot of familiar locales and figures we knew of from the original tale. But while we knew at least one familiar star from the Peter Jackson movies would return to reprise their role–Miranda Otto as Éowyn, as part of the film’s narrative framing device–we now know that one other figure from the films is returning in a touching, unexpected way.

We’ve known for a while that Saruman the White would appear in War of the Rohirrim, but at New York Comic Con recently producer Phillipa Boyens confirmed that the late Christopher Lee will actually voice the character in the film, thanks to the film returning to archival recordings of Lee’s performance to forge a new line of dialogue.

Boyens told TheOneRing.net (via /Film) that the decision came from a letter she received from Lee before his passing in 2015, as well was conversations with Lee’s wife, Birgit Kroencke (who passed away earlier this year), and after an attempt to search for someone who could capture Lee’s voice as a soundalike proved fruitless. Instead, War of the Rohirrim uses alternate takes of a line reading from The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies–Saruman asking Galadriel “Are you in need of assistance, my Lady?” during their encounter with the Necromancer at Dol Guldur.

“[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 explained. “So we went into his records, I got to go back and hear his voice–not just doing the lines, but talking to us as we were recording him.”

“We based it on a line from The Hobbit… 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?” the produced continued. “And our brilliant guys did that. But it is an authentic bit of Christoper Lee performance that it’s based on that line.”

A fun new fear in the world of entertainment we get to endure now as studios pivot to generative AI as the latest solution to all their problems is seeing the technology used to either deprive living actors of opportunities to work, or to resurrect dead ones so some form of their voice can keep working in perpetuity. We’ve already begun to see examples with this like James Earl Jones selling his voice to the AI company Respeecher before his passing, but it’s nice to see that War of the Rohirrim went the extra mile to use Lord of the Rings‘ extensive archives to at least keep things authentic as possible.

“To be honest, we didn’t know if we could find [that line],” Boyens added. “Just as a due diligence, we said ‘lets see if there’s a cast-alike as someone who could do the voice out there.’ Now I know the internet is going to say, of course, there’s a million people out there who could’ve done Christopher Lee’s voice, but you know what? I don’t think so. I’m so glad we used his own voice.

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