Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King
Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, aka
Ring of the Nibelungs, is a fantasy mini-series based on the Germanic saga of the
Nibelungenlied which tells the story of
Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer. (similar to Richard Wagner's four opera Ring Cycle, this film retells the stories from two of those operas (the third and fourth in the cycle), "Siegfried," and "Gotterdammerung.")
Written by the wife-and-husband team of
Diane Duane &
Peter Morwood, it stars
Benno Fürmann,
Kristanna Loken,
Alicia Witt and
Max von Sydow, was directed by
Uli Edel, and is a
Tandem Communications production.
It had a theatrical release in the UK in November 2004.The German language version,
Die Nibelungen, was shown on the German TV channel
Sat 1 on Nov. 29 & 30, 2004: it was the highest-rated mini-series of the year on German television.On
23 December,
2005 Channel 4 showed the entire series in one evening under the title
"Sword of Xanten", describing it as a "megafeature".It was shown on the
SciFi Channel on March 27, 2006, retitled "Dark Kingdom" for the U.S. audience, and minus about one hour of material.
The soundtrack was released in the USA by
Dancing Ferret Discs.
The source material for the story is often assumed to have inspired
J.R.R. Tolkien to write
The Lord of the Rings, although Tolkien denied this, commenting once: " Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases." [
1]
*
Official sites
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* US Trailer and Soundtrack info
* The German language web site of the movie;Other sites
* ;Reviews
*
BBC Review* -
Review of the movie, from Kristanna Loken fan site
