Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

winteriscoming.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 605 posts

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

#321

Post by UnpossibleJim »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #207
hbosch wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Well, lets start off by admitting to ourselves that guys like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin in particular (heck, probably even Viggo Mortensen, at least in the USA) didn't really have strong resumes before Fellowship. As a kid, I don't think I could have told you who Orlando Bloom was before LOTR -- because he wasn't anybody. I agree with what you said largely, but not Viggo Mortensen https://www.imdb.com/name/nm00015…

Dude! Crimson Tide, Carlito's Way... I know people like GI Jane.. not my favorite, but I'll give it to him. When was The Road? I think that was after. The Psycho remake... I know it got panned, but he was good in that, Anne Heche wasn't great, but he was really good.

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

#322

Post by arethuza »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #155
titzer wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And not to involve Jackson seems off Personally, the more I reflect on the Jackson series, the less I'm a fan. He borrowed heavily from the pacing, framing, and selectiveness of Bakshi's animated film, which didn't finish the trilogy. But worse, though inevitable when you have billions of $$ in your eyeballs, Jackson over-printed a lot of kids' imaginations with his depictions. I can't remember what I thought thing…

I had read LOTR just before the movies came out and I think Jackson did a pretty good job, although the books have a different feel with all the walking bits and the songs etc. I agree 100% about The Hobbit though, the movie was pretty decent, but really feels very different to the book. I think this is expected though as they extended a pretty small book to an entire trilogy of films and adapted what is essentially…

As lots of people have noted...

"thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread"

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

#323

Post by hedora »

oaiey wrote: post #22

They should have taken 100M of that and fund the remaining three seasons of The Expanse.

As much as I like The Expanse, I miss the old days, when Amazon (or Netflix) would have used the $465M to fund one season of each of 46 high-risk shows -- zero of which would be warmed-over sequels.

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

#324

Post by cjwilliams »

themitigating wrote: post #230
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…

Harry potter movie changed directors a few times right? Amazon is getting a 160mil tax credit in NZ. Regarding the team: "The team who will be creating the “LOTR” TV series includes: executive producers Lindsey Weber (“10 Cloverfield Lane”), Bruce Richmond (“Game of Thrones”), Gene Kelly (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Sharon Tal Yguado; writer/executive producer Gennifer Hutchison (“Breaking Bad”); writer/executive produce…

I think hiring Bryan Cogman is a red flag.

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

#325

Post by Emma_Goldman »

prepend wrote: post #71
cgeier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not particularly looking forward to this series, having rather unknown actors isn't putting me off at all. And why shouldn't they go with directors they are happy with? TV series often have a lot of different directors, often directing just a single episode of a season or even a series.

I think that them going with directors they are happy with is precisely the problem. Amazon has cranked out a lot of mediocre tv shows that don’t have any significant greatness. What’s strange about these directors is that they haven’t directed anything I thought was good at all. The writers have uncredited writing credits on Flash Gordon and Star Trek Beyond [0]. I like those but it’s just strange that that’s all th…

>"They are happy with is precisely the problem. Amazon has cranked out a lot of mediocre tv shows that don’t have any significant greatness."

This - the fact that this is an Amazon production already tells us a great deal about what to expect.

I have a low expectations for TV, but the Amazon catalogue has really plumbed new depths. It is an artistic wasteland. Just reading the title of this thread I therefore thought, 'How is this going to work out?' If you add to that the concerns of the OP, it does not look good.

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

#326

Post by runarberg »

bsaul wrote: post #86
cloutchaser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOTR, and also Peter Jackson are not compatible with modern media. LOTR is completely opposed storytelling wise to the current dogmas of postmodernism and equity, it's fundamentally a story based on old western/european/christian myths, basically what gets called white supremacy these days. I think this will turn out to be an absolute morbid tv series as it will force LOTR into the current dogmas, but this is probabl…

although i wouldn’t have worded it the same way, there’s definitely something true in your comment. I’m still amazed that people keep torturing stories made at different eras with different mentalities to try and promote today’s philosophy instead of coming with original materials. If you want diversity and black people on screen, why not create stories about the amazing empires that ruled the african continent in th…

You do know that Lord of the Rings is a fiction right? It happens in a reality where literal magic exits. I mean does the story specify the skin color of every character? Does it say that every elf is white skinned? I mean this is in a magical world, for all we know hobbits skin tone changes with age like that of Chimpanzees, being light when they are young, and darker as they get older. Or maybe non-binary genders are actually quite common among wizards. There is plenty of room for diversity in a fictitious universe. In fact a lack of diversity requires the special reading here, not the other way around.

Then the story is literally about a bunch of races solving a problem by working together. I mean the text it self literally celebrates diversity. Why wouldn’t you depict that in your casting?

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

#327

Post by mooreds »

Totally OT, but this kind of stuff drives me up the wall:

"Now, Deadline confirms that the first season of the show will cost $465 million to produce.

For comparison’s sake, Peter Jackson’s whole Lord of the Rings trilogy cost $281 million to make. For something more recent, Game of Thrones was spending around $100 million per season after it really blew up — this would be around season 6 — and spent far less in its early days."

The issue is that there is no inflation adjustment. $281M was different in the 2000s than it is now.

In fact, per https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm $281M in Jan 2004 (the last LoTR movie was released in Dec 2003) is $443M in May 2022 dollars.

Still eye popping numbers, but the costs for the series and the moves are no longer hundreds of millions of dollars apart.

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

#328

Post by softwaredoug »

I think people are burned out by prestige TV

The market is flooded and there’s only so many complicated series people can keep track of at one time. It’s like trying to read a dozen book series at the same time.

Years ago with shows like game of thrones, the market was more sustainable. A single show could justify a high budget and dominate cultural discussions for a while. Now the market is so streaming forward and swamped by streaming services people can’t keep up. It’s just becoming work to keep up with these shows. Not to mention the whole thing could end poorly (ie Game of Thrones)

You see this in the prevalence of limited series like Queens Gambit / Obi wan. People are just happy to have a self contained story where they don’t have to work. Or they want throw away, mindless TV that they doesn’t require much deep thinking.

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

#329

Post by hedora »

at_a_remove wrote: post #293
causi wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't necessarily agree with all of Jackon's decisions, but, in the end, I enjoyed watching the movies (and still do). The Hobbit films are a different beast, for sure. Exactly my opinion as well. What worries me is that we saw what ten years of market shift did between LotR and The Hobbit. Now it's been another ten years of it. Instead of showing bad people tearing down trees to fuel industry, we're going to have…

Oh gods no I ... I can see this happening, it's just too plausible.

Why wait, when you can watch this Gandalf^W Dumbledore prequel?

https://decider.com/2022/05/30/fantastic-beasts-the-secrets-...

(warning: Lots of spoilers in there...)

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

#330

Post by giancarlostoro »

anshumankmr wrote: post #2

Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt the profits from that will help them earn money to cover up the remaining 300 million or so they have still invested. And the "internet" really reacted negatively to the trailer as well. (I personally didn't hate the trailer myself but after having watched the original trilogy and the first…

I sure hope they don't mess it up. LOTR is an amazing series, it would be a shame for it to go the way of the Star Wars prequels and company.
Post reply on HN