Thread: Amazon's 'The Lord of the Rings' to Cost $465M for Just One Season

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Amazon Studios' The Lord of the Rings television show is going to cost all the gold in the Lonely Mountain.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Amazon will spend roughly NZ$650 million — $465 million in U.S. dollars — for just the first season of the show.

That's far above previous reported estimates that pegged the fantasy drama as costing an already record-breaking $500 million for multiple seasons of the show.

"What I can tell you is Amazon is going to spend about $650 million in season one alone," Stuart Nash, New Zealand minister for economic development and tourism, told Morning Report. "This is fantastic, it really is … this will be the largest television series ever made."

The figures were released as part of the New Zealand government's Official Information Act and initially reported by the New Zealand outlet Stuff. The documents also confirmed the studio's plan to film potentially five seasons in New Zealand — as well as possible, as-yet-unannounced spinoff series.

By comparison, HBO's Game of Thrones cost roughly $100 million to produce per season, with its per-episode cost starting at around $6 million for season one and eventually rising to around $15 million per episode in season eight.

Balls.

That's more money than all of my multiple selves across the multiverse make in a lifetime.

Jokes about using real life Hobbits aside (although I just farted when writing this) they seem pretty confident this is going to be a hit with audiences.
 
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I feel like it's tragic to spend so much time, effort, and money, on something that sounds like it's going to suck from all the details released so far.

I am glad to see television being treated so royally though. While that probably isn't as enormous as it sounds, given they're filming possibly 10 hours instead of 3, it's still a gigantic jump for TV. Same with the recent Disney+ TV shows.
 
I feel like it's tragic to spend so much time, effort, and money, on something that sounds like it's going to suck from all the details released so far.

I am glad to see television being treated so royally though. While that probably isn't as enormous as it sounds, given they're filming possibly 10 hours instead of 3, it's still a gigantic jump for TV. Same with the recent Disney+ TV shows.
Even with Disney, it's hit and miss lately.

Mandalorian was very good.

WandaVision was okay. It was enjoyable but kinda unnecessarily silly with a lot of uninterested characters.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a bore. Forget the wokey-ness of it all. It's just not a very interesting show.

Loki honestly looks like a blast and probably the best MCU series so far.
 
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I feel like it's tragic to spend so much time, effort, and money, on something that sounds like it's going to suck from all the details released so far.
Same. I have exactly zero urge to watch this. I haven't even seen Game of Thrones yet. The last TV series I bought and watched is Spartacus and that show is just phenomenal. I love how rough and grounded it is, compared to all the zombies, dragons and whatever on Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones just looks visually and stylistically boring, just like this new Lord of the Rings.
 
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I hope with all that money, the actors actually work well. So many recent actors lack charisma but keep getting work, like that woman from twilight.
There's a small handful of actors I like nowadays such as Karl Urban, Chris Pratt, Vin Diesel, Keanu Reeves and a few others. I liked Cas Anvar and Wes Chatham from The Expanse. Sucks about Cas Anvar though if the accusations are true.
 
This is going to be a hot mess, isn't it? There's no way Amazon can do the story justice.
 
I mean, is it really that much? Would depend on number of episodes per season and what actors the got, right? Charlie Sheen got about 2 million dollars per episode for Anger Management and Two and a Half Men. Let's say one episode of this series costs about 40 million and you have a couple of big names in it (the actors for Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond and then some? Plus you want some established hollywood-stars for new, recurring characters to draw in existing fans), then those 40 mio are quickly spent. And while I had now problem with the general production values of GoT ... it really was a tv-show still in terms of visual quality. So if this LotR series manages to feel and look like movie-quality, then I'd say it's money well spent.

But it's hard to gauge this show without having seen a single trailer.