'Tolkien' First Look: Nicholas Hoult Is The Hot Young 'The Lord Of The Rings' Author

Don't knock the Lord of the Rings nerd: the seminal high fantasy series was created by a young, hot man who apparently looked a lot like Nicholas Hoult. The Favourite actor stars in the upcoming biopic Tolkien as a young, good-looking J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of The Lord of the Rings series and the highly imaginative creator of the world of elves, hobbits, and dragons that have captured the minds of generations. See the Tolkien first look below.

Entertainment Weekly has released a slew of new images from the upcoming biopic about The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. The images are snapshots of his formative years, but most importantly the first image — other than showing Hoult doing his best brooding — give us a glimpse of Tolkien's early creative process, with various maps, scribbles of Elvish language, and sketches of giant spiders papering the wall behind him.

Directed by Dome Karukoski from a script penned by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, Tolkien stars Hoult as the titular author in his younger years as he survives the tragedy of being orphaned as a teen, and attends school in Birmingham where he befriends a group of fellow outcasts. The film follows through when he meets his future wife Edith (Lily Collins, pulling double duty with biopics this week) and heads off to World War I, events that would heavily influence his work with The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

His experience and disillusionment with war in particular would inspire The Fellowship of the Rings, which became a sort of treatise on wartime suffering. On the more positive side, his relationship with his wife Edith would inform the grand romance of Aragorn and Arwen.

Tolkien also stars Colm Meaney, Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson, Tom Glynn-Carney, Craig Roberts, Laura Donnelly, Genevieve O'Reilly, Pam Ferris, and Derek Jacobi.Tolkien will be released in theaters on May 10, 2019.