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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

#481

Post by blakebreeder »

tptacek wrote: post #449
blakebreeder wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk, all of the best characters in game of thrones were the established actors. ned stark, Robert baratheon, roose Bolton, tywin lanister.

There are "established actors", if Michael McElhatton is the standard we're using, in the new show. Sean Bean was the biggest draw in GoT and was gone after the first season. When we're quibbling over the resumes of character actors, we've conceded the main point, which is that GoT didn't use star power to attract its following.

I'm not quibbling over anything. I disagree with "Unheard of actors is generally a good thing when doing a new series" and the logic provided. It's just ridiculous on its face. Generally, people with more experience produce better results. Generally, people who have a history of producing better results produce better results. Who would have thought?

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

#482

Post by wmeredith »

acchow wrote: post #437
softwaredoug wrote: post #328

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…

> I think people are burned out by prestige TV Can you give some examples? I'm re-watching Westworld from the beginning now because I find most of what's out there to be boring

Not OP, but there's an embarrassment of riches right now when it comes to scripted dramas and comedies.

Apple TV+

- Severance

- Ted Lasso

- For All Mankind

- Slow Horses

HBOMax

- We Own This City

- Hacks

- Barry

- Tokyo Vice

- Gentleman Jack

- Peacemaker

- White Lotus

- Curb Your Enthusiasm

- Minx

- Insecure

- Industry

There are many more, but just on those two streamers that's a dozen+ shows that I've been really impressed by in one way or the other over the last year. And my list to watch has just as much on it.

As for a direct recommendation, I highly suggest you check out Severance if you like Westworld. It's slower burn, but similarly twisty sci-fi thriller.

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

#483

Post by colinmhayes »

acomjean wrote: post #424
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, f…

The acting in wheel of time was not good. It was bad enough to ruin the whole thing for me. Acting in high fantasy can be really tough because the rolls are commonly so different from what the actors are used to, but they did not get it done.

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

#484

Post by philsnow »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #349
subsubzero wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beorn was in the 1st Hobbit briefly, but he could have more screen time! I forgot about one character that never saw the light of day in any film(cartoon or movie) Tom Bombodil, he was a strange character even for Tolkien's universe and was rumored to be a demi-god. I would rather see stories about him than what amazon is sending out.

> Tom Bomb[a]dil, he was a strange character even for Tolkien's universe and was rumored to be a demi-god. The theory is usually that he's one of the major gods, not a demigod. I feel like there was a Maia who mated with an elf, but I don't remember with any certainty. Demigods aren't a major feature of the world. EDIT: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Melian is the Maia who mated with an elf. Their daughter, Luthien, is…

> The theory is usually that he's one of the major gods, not a demigod

It's probably too blatant for Tolkien to have cone up with but Tom Bombadil has the same number of letters in first/second names as Eru Iluvatar. The ring has absolutely zero effect on him, but that would probably be true of any of the Valar just as much as Eru himself.

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

#485

Post by wmil »

georgeecollins wrote: post #430
err4nt wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He was on Baywatch and North Shore before that.

Famous is probably the wrong word, but he was known in the TV industry. Basically if you were adding an "exotic beefcake" to an ensemble cast someone would suggest Jason Momoa.

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

#486

Post by ethbr0 »

tptacek wrote: post #373
philistine wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you could say we're in the middle of a transition. All the Marvel shows have used one director for the whole season of their shows, and they're not the only ones to have moved on to this format. As for OP's point, with the series' budget so high, a gun-for-hire TV director might not be accoustemed to the staggering budget they have to manage.

Not one of the Marvel Shows would break any reasonable TV top 10. The "1-2 showrunners, a writers room, and a rotating cast of directors" model is unimpeachably successful; it got us Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Americans, and Mad Men, among many others.

Also, say, things coming out of the other end of Disney: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandalorian#Episodes

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

#487

Post by wmil »

philistine wrote: post #364
jowday wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anything remarkable and seem to have just done other Amazon shows. With the exception of, say, the first season of True Detective, most TV shows use multiple directors. The director on a TV show is usually in charge of the technical execution of the writers scr…

Actually, you could say we're in the middle of a transition. All the Marvel shows have used one director for the whole season of their shows, and they're not the only ones to have moved on to this format. As for OP's point, with the series' budget so high, a gun-for-hire TV director might not be accoustemed to the staggering budget they have to manage.

That also has to do with the short length of the series.

Having a single director direct 24 1 hour episodes is probably impossible.

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

#488

Post by codeduck »

smsm42 wrote: post #377
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…

Numenor alone has enough to make a good series - you've got epic characters, great events, powerful kings, beauty, love, treachery, doom, magic, battles, betrayal and ruin. I've seen decent series done on much less than that.

Beren and Luthien would make a fantastic tale as well.

Disguising themselves as a vampire and a werewolf to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth in the pits of Angband? Makes the quest of Mt Doom look like a picnic. Pity we'll never see it

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

#489

Post by boringg »

subsubzero wrote: post #335
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are so many interesting tales Tolkien wrote that have not seen the screen Beorn! Completely left out of the Hobbit movies https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Beorn

Beorn was in the 1st Hobbit briefly, but he could have more screen time! I forgot about one character that never saw the light of day in any film(cartoon or movie) Tom Bombodil, he was a strange character even for Tolkien's universe and was rumored to be a demi-god. I would rather see stories about him than what amazon is sending out.

Agreed more about Tom Bombadil would have been the way to go. Can't believe he didn't make the cut. Not sure how they managed to do that.

If this was built as if it was MCU they would have had a small cameo then a full movie on Tom Bombadil.

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

#490

Post by cygx »

AlexandrB wrote: post #426
runarberg wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

Why should we assume that Middle Earth genetics work anything like normal Earth genetics?

Note that Middle-earth Earth ('Arda') supposedly is normal Earth: LotR takes place during the Third Age, whereas we're currently in the Sixth or Seventh Age.

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