What if they used this money to make something new. Can we all start consuming content that isn’t LoTR/GoT/MCU? What a travesty of a spend.
Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
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Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure we can ascribe religious purpose to works that borrow from popular stories that happen to be religious. The books/movies are also profoundly pagan, and lay out their own religious system for eg the elves which is not especially Christian. As I understand it there is a whole pantheon of god-like figures in the LOTR universe. If the author says it’s not an allegory, and it doesn’t work as an allegory, mayb…
"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #142
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Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#63It's staggering to think that this TV show might cost well over $2 billion. We are approaching numbers typically used only of events like the Manhattan Project or Apollo. Considering that movies and shows still get made about those and the apparently exponential growth of budgets, it seems likely that at some point, there will have been more money spent cumulatively on shows about the MP or Apollo than on the actual…
Reid Hoffman has talked about this quite a bit. So if this is a 13 hour season, at $500m, that is about $40M per hour. Big budget movies can be easily over $100M per hour.
Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#64It's staggering to think that this TV show might cost well over $2 billion. We are approaching numbers typically used only of events like the Manhattan Project or Apollo. Considering that movies and shows still get made about those and the apparently exponential growth of budgets, it seems likely that at some point, there will have been more money spent cumulatively on shows about the MP or Apollo than on the actual…
Exactly this.
More companies are spending more money and making more shows than ever.
So much could be done, so many more innovation to be made. And here we are. Apple and Amazon. Sigh.
One of the very good thing about these media is that they consume "the" fundamental unit we cant earn; Time. Which means we can only watch as much as we have time for.
Edit: I mean if we could spend $2B making this, surely it isn't too much to ask for a re- film the last 2/3 season of Game of Thrones once the books is finished. Or even the last season would be good enough for me.
Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#65Although I suspect this will not be a popular comment, I hope the Amazon series will remain faithful to the Catholic/Christian sense that Tolkien deliberately infused into these novels. Peter Jackson did a notably good job with that, all things considered. To be clear, I don't think that you should have to be a Christian to like Lord of the Rings -- quite the contrary. But given the lack of compelling Christian art i…
It's refreshing to hear this perspective. There have been a lot of authors and producers trying to capitalize on the success of the LOTR films and recreate the magic of middle earth with varying levels of success, but it's harder said than done. At the end of the day, Tolkien's philosophical and theological views do not get in the way of a really great story. I think that's at least in part what Tolkien's reservation with allegory was. There's a temptation to make a story to fit a narrative. History and narrative are crucial elements to making something compelling and this is where it's hard to compete with Tolkien.
Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#66The budget for the first three movies in total was 281 million. They filmed on location and had pretty good CGI, minus a few scenes that would look better today. Why are costs going up here? Tech is commoditized easily (ease of use and availability of talent), so I expect CG work to have gotten better and cheaper.
Prestige TV series cost way more money than average movies. Game of Thrones' last episodes cost $15 million each. https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/tv-series-budgets-costs-ris... I guess it was only a matter of time before they started rivaling prestige movie budgets too. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/559417/most-expensive-tv...
Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#67Although I suspect this will not be a popular comment, I hope the Amazon series will remain faithful to the Catholic/Christian sense that Tolkien deliberately infused into these novels. Peter Jackson did a notably good job with that, all things considered. To be clear, I don't think that you should have to be a Christian to like Lord of the Rings -- quite the contrary. But given the lack of compelling Christian art i…
> the lack of compelling Christian art in general the past 50 or 60 years What about all those Mel Gibson movies that you guys have?
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Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure we can ascribe religious purpose to works that borrow from popular stories that happen to be religious. The books/movies are also profoundly pagan, and lay out their own religious system for eg the elves which is not especially Christian. As I understand it there is a whole pantheon of god-like figures in the LOTR universe. If the author says it’s not an allegory, and it doesn’t work as an allegory, mayb…
I agree that LotR is not a straightforward allegory, but I'm also going off more than the author's religious identity. In Tolkien's words: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like "religion", to cults or practices, in the Imagin…
I’m not sure even the author is authoritative over their own work. Ray Bradbury once famously ditched a guest lecture because his audience disagreed on the framing of his book.
JK Rowling is thought to go back and retrospectively reframe her book, a framing which she has trouble gathering consensus for despite being the author.
Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#69Is this what we do now? Remake things that are still in the majority of our living memories? Have the original LOTR movies stopped holding up? Are we playing the long game and intending to have an Into The Smiegalverse?
The old Hobbit and LotR cartoons were released in 1977 and 1978 respectively. So Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001, 23 years after the cartoon, and this version is a further 21 years (assuming a 2022 release) after Jackson’s version, a similar time span. And damn, this makes me feel old.
>and this version is a further 21 years (assuming a 2022 release) after Jackson’s version, a similar time span.
Wow
I thought Fellowship of the Ring was like 10 years ago. Wasn't that long. I had to Google to fact check this. And you were right.
Come to think about it my kid is close to 10. So yes, 20 years ago. Those under 25 might never have watched it.
>And damn, this makes me feel old.
Yes. For some strange reason I felt time moves slower as we age.
Re: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lord of the Rings is in many places unexceptional, but I think the parts that stand out, particularly the themes of duty and camaradarie, like Frodo's personal struggle to resist the ring's effects, and Sam's love for Frodo, make it a seminal work. The moral fiber of Tolkien shines through in passages like this: Frodo: 'What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!' 'Pity? It was Pity t…
So true. It is really a shame they are going down the sex and nudity route to make it more like Game of Thrones.
Well, it's set in the degeneration era of latter-day Numenor, with proud long lived mortals struggling against "divine" (at least the Ainur) ban on sailing west and their immortal favored children. That society should look a lot like Game of Thrones' Rhllorism at the end I'd say. Complete with human sacrifices, dark magics, etc. Should be fun.