How much did 'Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power' cost? Amazon poured in the equivalent of 5.1 MILLION subscriptions
The 'Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' is an upcoming multi-million dollar worth fantasy television series based on the novel 'The Lord of the Rings' and its appendices by J R R Tolkien. Amazon bought the television rights for The 'Lord of the Rings', for $250 million in November 2017, making a five-season production commitment worth at least $1 billion. This would make it the most expensive television series ever made. Payne and McKay were hired in July 2018. The series is primarily based on the appendices of The 'Lord of the Rings', which include a discussion of the Second Age, and per the requirements of Amazon's deal with the Tolkien Estate, it is not a continuation of the 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Hobbit' film trilogies. Despite this, the production intended to evoke the films with similar production designs, and several members of the series' large international cast portray younger versions of characters from the films. Filming for the first eight-episode season took place in New Zealand, where the films were produced, from February 2020 to August 2021, with a production break of several months during that time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The season is scheduled to premiere on Prime Video on Thursday, September 1, 2022.
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The 8-episode season of 'The Rings of Power' has cost the company $715 million, or more than 5.1 million annual subscriptions to Amazon Prime, according to the Wall Street Journal. Last year, Amazon said to Insider that it had more than 200 million subscribers to Prime. A subscription to the service costs $139 per year.
According to Insider another source, a former senior Amazon Studios exec recently told "If we can't take this piece of IP and make it successful, why is Amazon Studios even here?... It has to succeed. There's no option," they said.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a Tolkien fan himself, recently tried to reassure potential fans that the e-commerce giant is producing the show for more than just the big bucks. "I hope we do Tolkien's work justice," he told Time magazine earlier this month.
The Journal also reported that other streaming companies, including Netflix and HBO, were interested in buying the TV rights of the much-loved book series, but only Amazon shelled out nearly $250 million, beating out the competition.
So wondering what is the premise of the multi-million dollar project? Don't worry got your back!
The storyline is set thousands of years before the events of 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings', the series is based on author J R R Tolkien's history of Middle-earth. It begins during a time of relative peace and covers all the major events of Middle-earth's Second Age: the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the island kingdom of Númenor, and the last alliance between Elves and Men. These events take place over thousands of years in Tolkien's original stories but are condensed for the series.