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Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

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Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#231

Post by greedo »

prepend wrote: post #88
jpgvm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last 2 seasons of GoT still hurt to think about. It's not the ending that hurts it's how it got there. The last 2 seasons probably should have been 3 full seasons instead of the barely 1.5 we got and had a lot more build up/Dany descent into madness/Bran having some relevance that would justify his elevation to ruler, etc. The suddenness of everything, the exposition, everything was just poorly executed. Too much mon…

I think the last two could have been 10 seasons and it would have been bad. The issue wasn’t cramming too much material, the issue is they didn’t have writers with ideas. They had been adapting GRRM and ran out of material to adapt and just went batty. I think the reason it is so compressed is because they could just charge through it quickly and make it work.

D&D were also trying to wrap it up quickly so they could move on to making the Star Wars series (that they subsequently got canned from).

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#232

Post by ren_engineer »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #68
Sebb767 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we all know how it ended once they ran out of his material. Yes, I'm still salty.

I never even bothered with Season 8.

people who say only season 8 was bad are part of the problem, book readers were warning about important changes as early as season 3 and 4, GRRM left after 4 due to those changes because while not obvious at first, they would result in entire character arcs getting wrecked long term.

The show started going "Hollywood" in season 5 and it was obviously declining in quality but people defended it and got what they deserved with season 8

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#233

Post by bobdvb »

hbosch wrote: post #177
prepend wrote: post #18

Obviously, I’ll wait and see once it comes out. But it seems odd to spend so much and not have a single established creator that has put out great content. And not to involve Jackson seems off because even having him in a consulting role would be a good sign. Looking at the imdb page this seems like a corporate driven project rather than a creator driven project with lots of different directors that haven’t don’t any…

>Also, I don’t recognize the actors at all. Like not a single one. Compared to LOTR, they didn’t rely on stars but they had Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Sean Aston, Viggo Mortenson, Liv Tyler, Christopher Lee, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett. It seems strange to not have anyone. I thought this was a cost cutting effort, but that doesn’t make sense if $465M. Well, lets start off by admitting to ourselves that guys like Elijah…

I think I'd disagree with the assertion about Elijah Wood, Deep Impact was a pretty big film and he had a key role in that. He also had many other roles before that in some pretty notable films, especially The Faculty and heck, he was playing alongside Kevin Costner in 1994!

Perhaps I am just old, and a keen film watcher, but I wouldn't describe him as a lesser known actor at that point in his career.

Also, Sean Bean has long been a well known supporting actor. Anna Karenina, Goldeneye, Patriot Games, etc. But I would concede that he's very much more well known in the UK because of his TV roles, especially Sharpe which ran for 7 series. Again, not a lesser known actor if you're playing the bad guy in a Bond film.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#234

Post by treis »

hef19898 wrote: post #196
treis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's not wildly successful books with wildly successful movies about the amazing empires that ruled the African continent. And it's hardly rewriting parts of LOTR to have a black actor portray Legolas. Everything is still the same except the color of the guys skin. You'll be fine.

If they had a black Legolas in LotR and Hobbit, sure, why not. Since they didn't, well, having a black Legolas just destroys continuity. But who am I complaining about missing continuity, after all we have the latest Dr. Strange with the sole purpose of including the Fantastic 4 and X Men into the MCU without invalidating the entirety of the MCU so far.

>Since they didn't, well, having a black Legolas just destroys continuity

Again it's just skin color. Little bit dramatic to call that destroying continuity.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#235

Post by oblio »

moonchrome wrote: post #209
imwillofficial wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seinfeld Is not just watch r for nostalgia, its still in syndication, and also has a massive overseas fan base. Mad Men is timeless in its lessons, novel in its execution, and holds a unique place in TV history. It’ll be watched for decades.

> It’ll be watched for decades. By a few people - likely. But enough to justify investing half a billion into show production ?

> The hit Warner Bros. sitcom from the 90s, Friends, is still a big moneymaker for the studio with average earnings that are estimated to be roughly a billion dollars per year. Keep in mind that this is a show that ended nearly 15 years ago. Beyond all imagination, this is still one of the most-watched sitcoms in 2017. I know, hard to believe.

https://reelrundown.com/tv/How-Much-Money-Does-US-Sitcom-Fri...

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#236

Post by Sebb767 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #191
Sebb767 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point: We (GP and I) don't think you need known actors. There are great series with (then) unknown actors. It's just strange to have such a massive budget (which usually would go, in part, to known actors and directors) and then forgo them. Also, for directors, there's definitely a case to be made that you need someone who can handle such a large budget. That's why I made the example with the junio…

Why strange? Others have pointed out plenty of benefits that going with good but lesser known actors brings, so why take on more risk with more famous actors? They don't need them for their brand value in this case. Amazon would probably like to have the next Orlando Bloom, but doesn't need or want the current Orlando Bloom (or any other famous actor).

Let me formulate it like this: The most expensive series so far was The Pacific, with a budget of $22 million per episode [0]. You'd expect a high budget series to spend a lot on actors and directors - let's just go with 50%. This would put this series on a budget equivalent of $800 million to $1 billion with a "normal" cast (depending on how much you calculate as budget for lesser known actors). Given 20 episodes [1], this comes down to an equivalent of $40-50 million per episode. Even extremely high production value series like GoT were well below this number. Just going with the actual number of $23.25 million per episode already makes this one of the most expensive series of all time.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be bad, but having a lesser experienced cast burn through that much money smells like bad management and could therefore be an indicator that the series is highly over-produced with not much content to go with it. Of course, time will tell, but the lack of known-good talent in the management and the insane amount of money spent don't make me overly optimistic.

[0] https://stacker.com/stories/3159/25-most-expensive-tv-series...

[1] https://www.slashfilm.com/568297/lord-of-the-rings-season-1-...

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#238

Post by roflyear »

rglullis wrote: post #87
workingon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never thought I’d live to see the day where people would unironically call equity dogma. But here we are. What a sad state of affairs.

What other word would you describe when people cry over "lack of diversity" when the story is set in a fantasy world that did not have such type of diversity to begin with?

What prevents you from casting minorities b/c it is fantasy? What crazy logic is that?

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#239

Post by roflyear »

cloutchaser wrote: post #79
workingon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never thought I’d live to see the day where people would unironically call equity dogma. But here we are. What a sad state of affairs.

Equity means equality of outcome, basically meaning you believe every person is equal in their results. This is religious dogma, because it's just not true. We are not the same, and you will always have differences in outcome in society. If you cannot see this, you are trapped in religious level dogmatic thinking. (PS: if you want to talk about equality, which we might perhaps call equality of opportunity, I'm all fo…

Too much equity can be a bad thing, but you don't go around saying drinking water is bad b/c too much of it will harm you.

Re: Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series

#240

Post by MisterTea »

synu wrote: post #157
MisterTea wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Jackson had done Heavenly Creatures and Frighteners and a few others before LOTR) No one ever mentions his first, a splatter flick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Taste Hilariously bad but a fun watch.

Meet the Feebles never seems to come up either.. one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Feebles

I have yet to see it. I grabbed bad taste around 2005/6 via torrent after hearing a sound bite in a death metal song. I found out about Meet the Feebles but couldn't find a working torrent at the time and forgot about it. I'll have to remind myself to find and watch it one day.
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