Look: We’ve known for a long time that Amazon has been managing for a long time Lord of the Rings The TV show was it will be one of the most expensive TV shows ever made. In his efforts to in the end get out of the shadow of its brighter and more expensive competitors – and maybe get out of the “indie TV” niche so often occupied by streamers – Big Daddy Bezos and his crew were perfectly willing to break the bank account in rare numbers, if ever, seen on the small screen. Even so, it’s kind of amazing: A THR report, From New Zealand Minister for Economic Development and Tourism, claiming that Amazon spends something like $ 465 million in the first season of the show. (Reminder: This should work for even five seasons, which means the old ones “a billion dollars” estimates for its full series are starting to look pretty weird.)
For a point of comparison – in an effort to understand how wild these numbers are – we can watch the show Lord of the Rings tries most clearly to imitate (to the point where its popularity has fallen off a cliff, anyway): HBO’s game of Thrones. But even in the final season of the show, when he organized massive battles and blew up castles with some regularity, episode budgets amounted to only $ 15 million. (In other words, you could get 31 more episodes ofReceived, if you wanted them, for what Amazon is revealing here.) Or, hey, here’s another node: Peter Jackson spent less than $ 300 million in total for the three Lord of the Rings movies, despite the fact that he had to make Middle earth only from scratch. Oh, and here’s another one: that $ 465 million budget? It’s just a Tolkien season life between Israel and Ireland – as in countries – on the list of national gross domestic product. It’s a lot of money, that’s our point.
THR note that there are some warnings in this second, third, maybe even fifth breakfast-sized party. First, the figures supported probably include the absolutely huge amount of money that Amazon paid to the Tolkien estate for the rights of LoTR (reported $ 250 million), as well as start-up costs for the series that will not have to be repeated. New Zealand will also register part of the bill, with the country offering global retailer Balrog a tax cut of more than $ 100 million in exchange for the effects the series is likely to have on filming in the country and tourism industries. hobbit. Even so, however, this is a completely ridiculous amount of money, which raises the question of what success would look like for a show like this, given that the series will be distributed, free of charge, to Amazon Prime subscribers. Is this only about Big Jeff having his own dragon? How many hobbits can buy $ 465 million?