Posted on 03/21/2018 7:50:31 AM PDT by Simon Green
And you thought Game of Thrones looked expensive.
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel will cost the company an estimated $500 million, according to Reuters.
The rights alone to a piece of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy franchise apparently cost the company $250 million. Amazon has made a deal for two seasons, and the production and marketing costs for both should total around another $250 million. This would make the LOTR project easily the most expensive TV series ever made.
In fact, it’s more than it cost Peter Jackson to make all three movies in his Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, at least, before their marketing costs (according to Box Office Mojo).
And the Amazon drama will have the additional challenge — some might say benefit — of not being a reboot of the familiar tale of Frodo and the One Ring. Instead, the Amazon project will be a prequel series based on Tolkien’s works with an as-yet-unreleased story line.
By comparison, HBO spends about $15 million per episode on GoT at this point — probably a bit more for the upcoming final season — plus marketing costs.
Last fall, former Amazon Studios head Roy Price declared the company was gunning for its own GoT: “I do think Game of Thrones is to TV as Jaws and Star Wars was to the movies of the 1970s. It’ll inspire a lot of people. Everybody wants a big hit and certainly that’s the show of the moment in terms of being a model for a hit.”
So which paragraph are they going to extrapolate out into 10 episodes?
So then a week’s pay for Bezos, huh?
Already saw it. Too many midgets running around the mountains. They start to blend together.
It isn’t a tv proggram because they are not a tv network.
Jackson did OK with LOTR although I think his three films showed a steady decline in quality and adherence to the books.
His Hobbit movies? OMG. Awful. Just awful. And why more than one??
the prequel to lotr is the hobbit..unless they’re doing the sillmarillion
I’ve yet to see those because I just can’t allow that be be the last vision of the books I see.
Never read the books, never saw the movies, won’t watch the TV shows................
$500 mil?! For 2 seasons?! That’s nuts.
Then what is it? It's not a film, it's not being shown in theaters.
It has to be some stoy line within the sillmarillion. And there’s a lot in there too. And the opportunity to F-it up is limitless.
I would be curious how the business side of Amazon bought off on this idea.
Frankly, the whole Hobbit era of movies were pitiful and just weren’t worth watching (I paid for the first one, and saw the remainder via airline travel). At the end, I felt like I’d been at some cheapo amusement park and going from land to land.
Assuming the base material is from “The Silmarillion” there is more than enough material to “flesh out” a “Game of Thrones” like series.
IF done properly(not like “The Hobbit”)
The first Hobbit movie was a waste of my time.
The second Hobbit movie just made me mad. I deeply regret seeing it. As an example: I swear they made Dain Ironfoot into a version of Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies. Just so wrong I cannot imagine what they were thinking.
Loved the books, very much enjoyed the LOTR trilogy (the Hobbit trilogy is another matter), looking forward to the series.
To each their own.
Let me guess, they are going to make Sauron look like Donald Trump and change the land of Mordor to a “Red State”.
The Sylmarillion,perhaps? That would be awesome!
I wonder if they will extrapolate the history of the last alliance of Men and Elves, and the one ring. Isildur’s fall under the spell of the one ring would have a proper Game of Thrones feel to it.
or they could do the fall of Numedor.
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