The upcoming Lord of the Rings animated prequel movie is scheduled to release in December, and ahead of the release, Phillipia Boyens, one of the movie's writers, has given some behind-the-scenes details on one of the characters, Saruman the White.
Boyens also co-wrote Peter Jackson's trilogy of Lord of the Rings films and is now, along with Peter Jackson, producing the War of Rohirrim. This animated prequel will take viewers back 183 years before the events of Jackson's trilogy, and will tell the story of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary kind of Rohan that is required to defend his people and family from the Dunlendings, a group of wild mountain people that are bitter foes to Rohan.
This story includes Saruman the White, and according to Boyen's Christopher Lee, he will post-humorously reprise his role as the character in the new animated movie. According to the writer, the team behind the project gained access to Lee's archive and was able to sample enough authentic voice recordings that it was possible for Lee to voice the character once again.
Boyens points out the team was very happy with the decision to use authentic recordings of Lee's voice to generate the dialogue for the movie, over simply getting an impressionist to attempt to mimic Lee's iconic voice.