Amazon Studios to Spend Record-Setting $465M on Upcoming THE LORD OF THE RINGS Series
By Movieguide® Staff
LORD OF THE RINGS fans have high standards.
Fans made this clear when Amazon received instant backlash after a report alleged that the new series based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s enthralling fantasy world would contain similar immoral content found in GAME OF THRONES.
It looks like Amazon may be still planning something along that scale … except much bigger.
Amazon Studios recently confirmed that the first season of the series “will be the largest television series ever made.”
Amazon will spend roughly $465 million in U.S. dollars on the premiere season.
“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.”
THR reported:
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.
As fans call for the LOTR series to contrast GOT with its content, what is certain is the difference in the two show’s single-season budgets.
The HBO fantasy epic cost around $100 million to produce per season, well shy of the expected spending for LOTR.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS series “brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone,” its official description reads.
The show is set to premiere later this year.
Movieguide® previously reported:
LORD OF THE RINGS fans are speaking out as Amazon sets to make their LOTR series more like GAME OF THRONES than the original source material.
J.R.R. Tolkein’s LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is a Christian allegory that contains no overt sexual content.
Yahoo News reported that casting calls for the upcoming series say they are seeking “talent who are comfortable with partial or full nudity.”
Amazon has also hired an intimacy coordinator Jennifer Ward-Lealand, which leads fans to believe that the rumors about sexual content are true.
