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

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #318

subsubzero wrote: post #309

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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…

> 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

Post by Kranar » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

blakebreeder wrote: post #481

tptacek wrote: post #449

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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?

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

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…

Post by deadbunny » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

cjwilliams wrote: post #324

themitigating wrote: post #230

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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.

Post by blakebreeder » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:35 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #515

blakebreeder wrote: post #481

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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?

That's wildly not the case in the performing arts; just, like, a crazy thing to say. Stars get cast over and over again because audiences are comforted by familiar faces, not because the stars themselves are somehow the best actors in the world. Ben Affleck is a leading man, for Christ's sake.