These dang kids, watching their Star Wars and Lord of the Rings! Back in my day, all we had was Buster Crabbe in Buck Rogers on a shoestring budget...and we were glad to have it!
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.”
Yep, that was my thought exactly — start on Numenor with the capture of Sauron and the corruption of men. It would have the dark feel and rich storyline that made GoT so popular. You could see the first two seasons take you through the Last Alliance.
‘Lord Of The Rings’ TV Series Shopped With Huge Rights Payment Attached
Late 2019 at the earliest.
Yes, it has to be the Silmarillion, unless they are just going to get some writers to make up a story that happens just before the Hobbit.
Thank you.
In Japan there have been things called OAVs for 30+ years (original animation videos) that neither screened theatrically or on tv.
Against my religion..................
I don't believe in them either. Nor do I believe in Darth Vader, or The Force. It's called fantasy. That'w what makes it fun.
Thor and Captain America already got 3 movies. Iron Man only had 3, and he was more popular, so they are probably done with those series anyway.
Spider-man will definitely get 2 more movies. The first was a hit, and he’s more bankable than Iron Man for sure. There’s going to be a Guardians 3 for sure as well, and Ant-Man 2 is already ready to drop.
Haven’t watched any Star Wars movies since the 1st one in 1977....................
Oh good, I’m not the only one who thought The Hobbit films were awful.
The one that changed it all. It's now the Golden Age of science fiction and fantasy films. 90% of the top 20 films of 2017 were fantasy or science fiction of some sort.
About half of the first film was good (meeting the dwarves and the Gollum sequence). A bit of #2 was good (Bilbo & Smaug).
The rest was dreadful.
Haha! Good one.
Hobbits died on FR. Haven’t seen a post on a Hobbit Hole thread come across the board in 10 years.
The all time greatest FR Hobbit thread is this one:
Thermobaric Bomb Destroys Hobbit Hole
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/639647/posts
Gosh, what a bunch of bitzchy old people on this thread.
Here’s a life tip: Don’t like the idea? Don’t watch it.
Easy peasy.
Yawn.
Songs and poems! Yay!
These dang kids, watching their Star Wars and Lord of the Rings! Back in my day, all we had was Buster Crabbe in Buck Rogers on a shoestring budget...and we were glad to have it!
“It isn’t a tv proggram because they are not a tv network.”
It will be on Amazon TV and shown in one hour segments. That’s TV. It’s a miniseries. That’s TV.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.