Mad Max and X-Men star, Nicholas Holt is currently in talks to play the Lord of The Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien in an forthcoming biopic on the early years of the famed writer.

Heart of the Lion and The Grump director Dome Karukoski has already signed a deal to helm the picture from Fox Searchlight and Chernin Entertainment film which is titled ‘Tolkien’, a project that has been in development since 2013.

Written by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford the biopic focuses on the formative years of the orphaned author as he finds friendship, love, and artistic inspiration among a group of classmates prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He served in the British armed forces from 1916 to 1920, then wrote the two novels while working at Pembroke College. Tolkien died in 1973.

The outbreak of World War I threatens to tear the ‘fellowship’ apart and his experiences inspire him to write his famous Middle-Earth novels, most notably “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Tolkien

Listed by The Times as the 6th  Greatest British Writers since 1945 and known as the Father of modern fantasy literature, J.R.R. Tolkien was also a poet, philologist, and university professor best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

Hoult will next be seen alongside Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison and Michael Shannon as George Westinghouse in another biopic, The Current War in which he plays Inventor Nikola Tesla a man best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. Hoult will also reprise his role as Beast in X-Men: Dark Phoenix which is scheduled for release in November 2018.