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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

#501

Post by asdajksah2123 »

jowday wrote: post #363
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'…

Sure - the MCU uses a lot of TV directors for example - since it functions more like a TV show than a auteur-driven series of films.

And because it's a lot cheaper.

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

#502

Post by Justsignedup »

Biggest worry:

I have massive doubts that this show would bring in profits similar to Avengers: End Game. Because that's what it'll take.

Even if this is a smashing success by streaming standards, Season 2 will be ridiculously toned down to keep the costs down to like 50MM. People will instantly say "quality dropped significantly" and then it'll collapse. Feels like this will go the way of Marco Polo which was an amazing show, destroyed by Netflix's lack of desire to spend any money.

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

#503

Post by theshrike79 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #160
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.

Is it possible the reason it ended so badly is the same reason they ran out of material? It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel. I think GRRM may have written himself into a corner and is unsure how to tie up all the threads and satisfactorily end the series.

> It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel.

To put this in context: All 9 books of The Expanse were written during this period along with a six season TV show based on the same material. The two writers were involved in both actively.

I've 100% given up on ever seeing how ASOIAF ends. Same with Rothfuss's Kingkiller, it's been 11 years and I stopped caring during the previous decade

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

#504

Post by asdajksah2123 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #160
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.

Is it possible the reason it ended so badly is the same reason they ran out of material? It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel. I think GRRM may have written himself into a corner and is unsure how to tie up all the threads and satisfactorily end the series.

This is exactly what happened.

GRRM wrote himself into a corner he hasn't been able to disentangle.

And the showrunners didn't have the luxury of waiting 11 years between seasons.

I do think they could still have done a better job, but it's hard to say from the outside because we don't know the budget, time and story constraints they were working under.

By the time the final few seasons came around, almost all the actors had become famous on their own right, who were taking on a ton of other shows (and I doubt they were under contract for the entire run, especially since it was never expected to last as long as it did) and it must have been a massive challenge bringing them together to film the final few seasons.

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

#505

Post by AlwaysRock »

asdff wrote: post #472
xdennis wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quality matters if you care about having a cash cow and not just a one off. I'm not trying to be provocative, but how do you explain superhero movies then? They all seem to be the same and are a huge cash cow. IMHO, if you throw hundreds of millions of dollars at something and the same in marketing, they will come because the majority of people will just watch what's on.

Because those do have quality to them. Actors and directors people have heard of, no money held back on production budget, and people actually think they are good movies. Avengers infinity war has a 91% fan rating on rotten tomatoes and an 85% critic rating. These marvel movies aren't one offs, they are a constant cash cow of seemingly consistent quality in the eyes of their fans who fill these theaters. Meanwhile wi…

Yeah superhero movies are not quality TO ME. But I have family members who do and will see every single marvel thing made. Even the ones they dont love they will enjoy because its the characters they enjoy and its building a universe they are invested in.

They are well filmed. The action tends to be good. They have stars in them. They have characters in them people care about. Those are all things that will draw a lot of people towards them.

Halo has 1-2 characters people give a shit about and zero stars. The LOTR show seems to be the same...

I'm not saying you HAVE to have those things for something to be quality but to keep people coming back those things help a lot.

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

#506

Post by AlwaysRock »

larrik wrote: post #391
AlwaysRock wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality doesnt matter anymore. It will get views because it has a brand attached to it and lots of people already have prime. I don't know what their break even number is but prime is fucking expensive. If this pushes 1% of people who are on the edge of buying prime and not buying prime into making that decision its a massive win for them. I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it k…

> prime is fucking expensive Prime is similar to or cheaper than Netflix (depending on your Netflix plan), and yet also includes "free shipping", a selection of free movies, a selection of free books, all the "Prime Gaming" goodies, and a bunch of other stuff. Netflix, meanwhile, charges you extra for 4k (and by some perspectives, HD). I dunno, Prime doesn't feel that expensive, even if it is more than Disney+ or HBO…

I guess if you put it next to netflix its not that expressive but I rarely use Prime for video. Once in a while something happens to be on there and its nice but 8/10 times their movie is only available on some channel I have to pay extra for.

I'd probably view prime differently if they allowed me to pay monthly like netflix or other services.

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

#507

Post by nkurz »

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.

Legion is at least one counter-example. They used award winning indie film directors on a per-episode basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_(TV_series)

The result was that each episode often had a very distinct style, which matched well to the underlying theme of schizophrenia.

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

#508

Post by AlwaysRock »

ausbah wrote: post #343
AlwaysRock wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality doesnt matter anymore. It will get views because it has a brand attached to it and lots of people already have prime. I don't know what their break even number is but prime is fucking expensive. If this pushes 1% of people who are on the edge of buying prime and not buying prime into making that decision its a massive win for them. I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it k…

>I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it keeps getting made. what is the most objective judge of quality if not what people are willing to watch

I don't know. I don't think popular can be equated with good though. Love is Blind was hugely popular. It is terrible tv. The same can be said about most content. If you come up with an objective system that everyone agrees on you will be a billionaire. But anyone can tell you that popular doesnt equal good.

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

#509

Post by asdajksah2123 »

antisthenes wrote: post #395
cameronh90 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible the reason it ended so badly is the same reason they ran out of material? It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel. I think GRRM may have written himself into a corner and is unsure how to tie up all the threads and satisfactorily end the series.

> It's been 11 years since the last ASOIAF novel. I think GRRM may have written himself into a corner and is unsure how to tie up all the threads and satisfactorily end the series. A much simpler explanation is that GOT show creators/owners paid him off not to publish the newer books, until they consider the market life of the TV show exhausted. Unless GRRM is struggling with mental health issues, it doesn't take 11…

That makes absolutely no sense. Why would they want him to not write books and give them a story.

Even if GRRM wrote at the fastest pace he had ever written, the books would still be way behind the show.

Here are the GoT Season release years by season: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019.

Basically, 1 season a year, with the final season taking 2 years.

Here are the ASOIAF book release dates: 1996, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2011

So it was 2 years at its best (the first 3 books), and then it increased to 5, and then 6. He had already been slowing up badly as he tied himself up in knots, that he has been trying, unsuccessfully, to untangle for some time.

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

#510

Post by AlwaysRock »

josteink wrote: post #360
AlwaysRock wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality doesnt matter anymore. It will get views because it has a brand attached to it and lots of people already have prime. I don't know what their break even number is but prime is fucking expensive. If this pushes 1% of people who are on the edge of buying prime and not buying prime into making that decision its a massive win for them. I don't think it will be any good. But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it k…

> But 95% of film and tv is terrible and it keeps getting made. As the amount of things being made seemingly have increased tenfold, while the amount of watchable stuff seems at best to stay level, I say the figure is probably closer to 99% as we speak. And the overzealous eagerness to retell already successful stories, but with the message [0] forcefully attached, is causing noticeable political fatigue in increasin…

Yeah I realized a while back that the quantity of content that is being created is largely due to the fact that many more demographics are being targeted widely now.

As a white 20-40 year old guy 50 years ago nearly 100% of the mainstream content was targeted at me or my family. Now that number is lower. I don't think its drastically lower but lets say its 80%. That means at least 20% of the content that is being created in 2022 I'll pop on and go, "Eh. Not for me." Which is great. Because for someone else who has been watching content not targeted at them their entire life they turn on and go, "Holy shit this is exactly what I want."

Easy way to make that content? Just retell the same stories and change things around a bit so other demographics can relate to it.

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