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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

#421

Post by odessacubbage »

subsubzero wrote: post #309
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…

Huge LOTR/Tolkien fan ever since I was a kid, loved the Ralph Bakashi animated LOTR film from the 70's(great rotoscoping and creepy mood), absolutely loved the Peter Jackson trilogy, liked the hobbit animated films Rankin and Bass(good music!, weird animation?), even found enjoyment in the newer Hobbit trilogy(3 movies for 1 small book? Smaug was great though!). After seeing this amazon trailer though I am beyond dis…

thinking back to the bakshi film really makes me wish we could get an animated tolkien anthology like the animatrix or heavy metal. imo that would be a very good way to handle something like the silmarillion.

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

#422

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#423

Post by oaiey »

seanwilson wrote: post #354
nonameiguess wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As has been hinted at here, the fact that they included Strange Dogs into season 6 is a pretty clear hint that more is coming. There is no reason to include that if they aren't going to adapt the Laconia storyline at some point, since the only purpose of that story is to introduce us to this new planet and what the Mars rebels discovered there. I suspect they're going for a film trilogy with a much bigger budget per…

Can they write around the time jump? Is it that critical to the story?

Yes. But come on, makeup, some gray hair.

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

#424

Post by acomjean »

breatheoften wrote: post #260

$465 million for one season of TV seems very expensive. But $465 million as part of the bootstrapping/rnd budget for some new gpu-adjacent compute offering would be pretty easy to justify ... and potentially being able to move some of the development cost associated with that new cloud offering out of aws and into some other budgetary boundary is almost certain to provide stock boosting effects. It seems obvious to m…

250 Million was just licensing. So they're starting in a deep hole.

Strange, Amazon seem to went the budget route for "Wheel of Time" which I enjoyed, (though popular I hadn't read any of the books). The effects were good, acting was good.

But think of the product placement offerings Middle Earth offers amazon. The amazon prime delivery wagon. Alexa smart speakers were bountiful in that time as were "fire" tablets, forged from dragons breath.

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

#425

Post by err4nt »

danso wrote: post #419
subsubzero wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge LOTR/Tolkien fan ever since I was a kid, loved the Ralph Bakashi animated LOTR film from the 70's(great rotoscoping and creepy mood), absolutely loved the Peter Jackson trilogy, liked the hobbit animated films Rankin and Bass(good music!, weird animation?), even found enjoyment in the newer Hobbit trilogy(3 movies for 1 small book? Smaug was great though!). After seeing this amazon trailer though I am beyond dis…

Besides Sean Bean — who was far from A-list — how many of the Games of Thrones cast were well-known? Jason Momoa and Pedro Pascal, who’ve probably had the most post-GoT success so far (and who were two of the most popular/memorable characters on GoT), didn’t have widespread recognition before GoT.

I haven't seen GoT but Jason Momoa was already a decently well known name before that show, he has been in other things and he is so unique, once you've seen him you never forget him.

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

#426

Post by AlexandrB »

runarberg wrote: post #339
prepend wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this argument quite a bit and think it’s shallow. Of course, I’m not against diversity in casting, but am against bad arguments. Stories have internal consistency. So while Tolkien has dragons and magic, they all make sense together. If a character pulls out an iPhone it doesn’t fit and detracts from the stories. Saying “but iPhones? That’s a bridge too far, how can you believe in dragons but not iPhones.” The…

> Tolkien goes into genealogy of characters so switching the skin color requires lots of other changes to maintain that sense of reality. But Tolkien didn’t specify what traits inherit in which races did he? How do you know how skin tone inherits in this magical world? Even in our universe we have species such as Chimpanzees which grow darker skinned as they age? How do you know the same doesn’t happen with wizards?…

Indeed. There are elves that live for thousands years and have magic powers. There are some humans who have a normal lifespan and others, like Aragorn, that live for hundreds of years. Elves and humans can somehow cross-breed. Why should we assume that Middle Earth genetics work anything like normal Earth genetics? It's so weird to insist on keeping this one aspect of human genetics when everything else seems to be up for grabs.

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

#427

Post by georgeecollins »

Production costs have gone up a lot in New Zealand after Peter Jackson put them on the map. Also, if the government is covering 25% of the costs it creates an intended incentive to spend more.

People spend a lot on content because successful content is worth it. I hope this is good.

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

#428

Post by xsmasher »

logifail wrote: post #413
jollybean wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In TV 'Mr. Big' is usually the 'Showrunner'. Basically the original creators. It's like a form of creative production and management. For film, the Director is often kind of the version of 'Showrunner'. If the director was the one doing the pitching, raising the money - they they are that. If it's a big IP asset, like Star Treck, then it's different, sometimes a team effort. Like Kathleen Kennedy is the 'Big Honcho'…

> the showrunner This term seems to have entered common usage quite recently. Q: Why? "In United States network television [the showrunner is] typically credited as an executive producer"[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner

You can't use the terms interchangeably. An "Executive producer" credit may be applied to lots of people who are not the showrunner.

>This credit is given to the showrunner, or the head writer, and is sometimes also given to other important members of the production. These could include the show’s creator if different from the showrunner, other high-level writers (often future seasons’ showrunners), the owner/creator of source material, a show’s star, the star or writer or creator’s manager, a high-level executive or creative type (like Steven Spielberg) influential in the show’s creation, or any other number of people.

>Many TV shows have multiple executive producers, and without knowing the specific situation, it’s hard to say what the individual people do. For instance, a TV show derived from a movie (like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), may bring with it Executive Producers from the original film, who have little direct involvement with the show.

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

#429

Post by pfortuny »

oneoff786 wrote: post #282
tlear wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denethor and Faramir treatment hurt.. My number 1 gripe was the army of the dead being the deus ex machina making rest of the battle pointless joke. This is after making perfect entrance for Rohan I like the movies and enjoy watching them, some parts are masterpieces but some not so much.

What was the original army of the dead like? It always seemed like the weakest point of all the films and certainly the most glaring plot hole of why didn’t they keep using them.

More or less as in the film BUT they were eager to leave the Earth, and they only needed to heed their oath. They do so in a side battle (near Osgiliath IIRC) and, immediately, Aragorn sets them free.

But they are not “an army at the ser ice of Aragorn”. They just want to be liberated and to do so, they fulfill the promise they broke. They are not obligated to more (and Aragorn has no power to keep them “here”), much less to make them obey him.

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

#430

Post by georgeecollins »

err4nt wrote: post #425
danso wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides Sean Bean — who was far from A-list — how many of the Games of Thrones cast were well-known? Jason Momoa and Pedro Pascal, who’ve probably had the most post-GoT success so far (and who were two of the most popular/memorable characters on GoT), didn’t have widespread recognition before GoT.

I haven't seen GoT but Jason Momoa was already a decently well known name before that show, he has been in other things and he is so unique, once you've seen him you never forget him.

Famous for Stargate Atlantis? He was great in that but not well known.
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