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.”
It was a struggle for me to watch them all. It seemed like the same battle with orcs over and over. I only watched them because the wife wanted to see them. I knew they were going to suck when I heard about them being stretched out to 3 movies.
There’s plenty of worthwhile material to start with:
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Lost-Tales-History-Middle-Earth/dp/0345375211
Is Tom Bombadil back in?
I agree that would be good.
Good heavens, what a thought. Let's hope not.
Would be better if Amazon did LOTR and the Hobbit completely over again...and this time, stick to the books!
Oh c’mon man, they were GREAT! Can’t see a need for a TV show though. Everyone who would have been interested have already seen it all.
All the actors would be different, unfamiliar.
This will be an epic waste of money (failure)
If I understand correctly, this is not the LotR, or The Hobbit, but the earlier periods from The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales.
There is a LOT of unique material there, like the tale of Beren and Luthien or The Fall of Gondolin, and plenty room for Amazon to work with it.
Well, no matter what it is, it will be maybe 5% Tolkien and 95% Amazon scriptwriters. Not like LOTR where they had to figure out what to leave out. In this case they’ll be making up filler.
Well....to each their own. I'll take the Harvard Lampoon's version, Tim Benzedrine, over Bombadil.
Same with Tolkein.
Lord of the Rings by Amazon.com. Now featuring gay elf love triangles and heroic pedophile dwarves. You heard it here first.
Arguably the premier Christian author of the 20th Century.
Ping to ya :)
“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??”
Could not agree more. The first LOTR was fairly acceptable (after the opening scene); it was pretty much downhill from there. But the Hobbit movies were execrable.
I can’t do snippets of good :) I enjoyed The 3 LOTR and own the extended versions. Have watched several times.
Oh I’ll watch it, but I’m not one of the folks who complained that Peter Jackson cut Tom Bombadil and his songs and poems from the film. Quite the opposite. If there’s an epic story to tell then show me, don’t sing it. I devoured the original books but tended to skip the poetry. Then I tried the silmarillion and it was a bit too much of that for my tastes. But admittedly I didn’t get far.
3 was a bit much. By a bit, I mean 2 too many. I suffered through them.
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