Saruman appears as a minor villain in "Lego Dimensions", in which he allies himself with main antagonist Lord Vortech. Asteroid 418532 Saruman was named after the wizard and in honor of actor Christopher Lee. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 25 September 2018 (). [a] The volume published as "The Silmarillion" in 1977 contains four books in addition to the "Quenta Silmarillion". The last of these—"Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age"—covers Saruman's earlier history, but was written after "The Lord of the Rings". Note: For ease of reference, citations of "Letters" include
The Hobbit (film series) between "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Jackson concurred, stating that "one of the drawbacks of "The Hobbit" is its relatively lightweight compared to "LOTR" ["The Lord of the Rings"] ... There's a lot of sections in which a character like Gandalf disappears for a while – he references going off to meet with the White Council, who are actually characters like Galadriel and Saruman and people that we see in "Lord of the Rings". He mysteriously vanishes for a while and then comes back, but we don't really know what goes on." Jackson was also interested in