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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

#571

Post by chaostheory »

manmal wrote: post #546
chaostheory wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with Jackson being terrible to even have on for consulting due to what he did to The Hobbit. I wasn’t happy with what he did with some key scenes in LOTR either. I feel the main reason he was left out though is because there might be animosity between him and the Tolkien family in terms of art direction.

The Hobbit production was so heavily rushed, I wouldn’t hold the quality issues against Jackson.

The story was butchered. In his defense it makes sense from the box office perspective. The masses need excitement and spectacle. The original Hobbit story doesn’t have that. It’s more low key.

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

#572

Post by tptacek »

chaostheory wrote: post #571
manmal wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hobbit production was so heavily rushed, I wouldn’t hold the quality issues against Jackson.

The story was butchered. In his defense it makes sense from the box office perspective. The masses need excitement and spectacle. The original Hobbit story doesn’t have that. It’s more low key.

I felt (maybe without justification) that LOTR shoplifted a lot from the Bakshi LOTR. Which makes what happened with The Hobbit even weirder, because people already managed to adapt it reasonably well for the screen; you wouldn't think "much worse than Rankin-Bass Hobbit" was a likely outcome for the money spent.

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

#573

Post by anshumankmr »

asciiresort wrote: post #224
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…

> Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch Isn’t that why Disney acquired Star Wars and Marvel? Imagine an Amazon theme park alongside Universal Studios and Disneyland.

Disney got Star Wars for 4B, Star Wars merch is pretty much one of the most iconic and most sought out merch out there, the movies with some exceptions have been financial hits, they have had some good video games on console/PCs and they also have some mobile games that I believe would be raking in the sweet lootcrate money, the theme park attractions no doubt attract many, the Mandalorian was a critical and commercially sucessful show, and it seems despite the dip in quality in their other live action shows, the viewership has only increased.

https://collider.com/obi-wan-kenobi-finale-audience-disney-p....

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

#574

Post by anshumankmr »

wodenokoto wrote: post #267
oblio wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those shows are contemporary to the 90's. Seinfeld just has generic situational humor + great characters, and even Seinfeld will probably fade as its nostalgic watchers age and go away. It will just take 30-40 more years :-)

There’s a lot of landline / phone booth / message machine based jokes and story lines. I don’t think 20 year olds will have an easy time picking up the show as they can’t relate to those problems. I think Seinfeld is very much riding the nostalgia train now. Mad men don’t assume any of its audience knew what the 60’s was like, so it has a chance of being more timeless.

In America and Europe, yes. Landlines are still being used elsewhere.

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

#575

Post by drill_tulips »

sn0w_crash wrote: post #152
Miner49er wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being black is now called "politically correct"? Why not just say black?

I think they mean having to hit a certain quota of ethnicities of people. LOTR has been very vocal about how “diverse and inclusive” this production is.

No post body was provided.

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

#576

Post by didntknowya »

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…

Amazon investing in the LOTR world (with an established fan base) I would think it's less risky than Netflix's strategy of burning hundreds of millions on famous producers without any criteria than just to produce something good- more often than not being misses rather than hits.

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

#577

Post by j5r5myk »

StevePerkins wrote: post #277
j5r5myk wrote: post #104

The Severance budget was over $300 million and that shot in NYC so $350 in NZ after rebate makes sense. I had heard they were spending $1 billion on the new LOTR, maybe that’s including rights and marketing

I'm going to need a citation on that. Sources that I read from a quick web search indicate that Apple is spending an average of $10 million per episode on its shows. How "Severance" could cost $300 million, when it takes place almost entirely on an indoor office set, defies plausibility.

You are right I checked my sources and I was quite mistaken. $100 million budget is it what it landed at.

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

#578

Post by Semaphor »

auggierose wrote: post #549
Semaphor wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, but then I also never read the books.

Didn't read the books either. Just such a badly written show with horrible actors.

Yeah, I’ll disagree there, it’s decently written with good actors. Far worse shows out there, like everything from MCU.

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

#579

Post by in_cahoots »

jodrellblank wrote: post #534
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.

Ser Bronn spent seven weeks at the UK chart number one, bestselling single of 1995, had an album that went 6x platinum and another that went 4x platinum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robson_%26_Jerome https://youtube.com/watch?v=r5V8ecsrxeY Ian McShane was Lovejoy on British TV for 8 years and after GoT has been in John Wick; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McShane

Ian McShane was in exactly as many GoT episodes as Ed Shireen: one. He’s hardly a star of the show.

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

#580

Post by DivineBicycle »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #129
bmj wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christopher Tolkein was hopelessly grumpy (or protective, depending on your perspective) about anyone doing anything with his father's works. Personally, as a fan of Tolkein's works, I thought LoTR was fine . 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.

Christopher Tolkien I think was fairly correct in his analysis of the LoTR films, and I think it became clear with the Hobbit what the ultimate conclusion of that style of treatment of the source material would be. What he got wrong is that they're perfectly fun and good films in their own right - it'd be more accurate to say they're heavily inspired by the LoTR books rather than being direct adaptions. In some cases…

That's what I think, they are not accurate to the books, or book in The Hobbit's case, but they are good films and I love watching them.
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