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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

#81

Post by SilasX »

both_cucumbers wrote: post #73
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…

Amazon Prime customers spend $1968 / year on average. $465M / $1968 = 236,280 For perspective, Disney Plus added 7.9 million users in just the first quarter of 2022.

Those revenues still have to cover the cost of buying the things they sell to prime members. It’s not pure profit.

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

#82

Post by sumtechguy »

d4rkp4ttern wrote: post #44

Tangential — I wish they or someone else serializes Dune. It’s so tailor made for a tv series. Also looking forward to Three Body Problem from nflx

The thing with dune is the first 2 books are perfect for that sort of thing. Then it goes kind of meta weird. Not sure most audiences would be up for that. The last movie I was pumped for. However, I did not realize you could make dune that mind blowing boring. It was very nicely done, but kind of boring. I think that is because the book breaks one of the rules of movies/tv 'show dont tell'. Whereas the dune books are nothing but 'tell'. It is why a lot of Steven King books fall flat in the movies. That can be tough. As that can get rather dull. As you look at what the chars are seeing but you are missing out on their commentary. They tried that in the 84 dune and it just came out awkward.

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

#83

Post by prepend »

pflenker wrote: post #35
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…

As a huge ASOIAF fan, I had the same concerns after Game of Thrones was announced and first details were shared. The crucial difference, though, is that GRRM himself was involved in the series.

D&D had written a lot of movies (25th hour, troy, kite runner, wolverine, brothers) and there were some “known actors” (Lena heady, Peter Dinklage, aiden gillan, Charles dance, Sean bean).

And I think the biggest problem with game of thrones is that the show runners crapped out after GRRM ran out of material. So I would want a better runner for Tolkien.

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

#84

Post by imwillofficial »

moonchrome wrote: post #64
oblio wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Probably all of the above plus it's a long term move. Amazon needs to build up a strong catalog and marquee TV shows are long term attractions. As an example, Mad Men, esp…

>As an example, Mad Men, especially because it's set in the 1960s will probably still be watched in the 2060s. Why ? The only old TV shows I see being popular long term is era defining shows you watch for nostalgia (eg. Seinfeld, Friends). Maybe some real classics like Sopranos that everyone was watching at the time. Shows like Mad Men ? I really don't see it. And more importantly this LOTR show - how many people are…

Seinfeld Is not just watch r for nostalgia, its still in syndication, and also has a massive overseas fan base.

Mad Men is timeless in its lessons, novel in its execution, and holds a unique place in TV history. It’ll be watched for decades.

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

#85

Post by anshumankmr »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #80
anshumankmr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wish they or someone else serializes Dune https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/

That (and the follow-on) weren't too bad. Much better than Lynch's treatment. I must say, though, that I'm looking forward to part 2 of Villeneuve's Dune .

Haven't had the time to watch it. Working my way through the book.

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

#86

Post by bsaul »

cloutchaser wrote: post #63
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…

LOTR, and also Peter Jackson are not compatible with modern media. LOTR is completely opposed storytelling wise to the current dogmas of postmodernism and equity, it's fundamentally a story based on old western/european/christian myths, basically what gets called white supremacy these days. I think this will turn out to be an absolute morbid tv series as it will force LOTR into the current dogmas, but this is probabl…

although i wouldn’t have worded it the same way, there’s definitely something true in your comment. I’m still amazed that people keep torturing stories made at different eras with different mentalities to try and promote today’s philosophy instead of coming with original materials. If you want diversity and black people on screen, why not create stories about the amazing empires that ruled the african continent in the past, rather than rewrite parts of LOTR ?

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

#87

Post by rglullis »

workingon wrote: post #72
cloutchaser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOTR, and also Peter Jackson are not compatible with modern media. LOTR is completely opposed storytelling wise to the current dogmas of postmodernism and equity, it's fundamentally a story based on old western/european/christian myths, basically what gets called white supremacy these days. I think this will turn out to be an absolute morbid tv series as it will force LOTR into the current dogmas, but this is probabl…

Never thought I’d live to see the day where people would unironically call equity dogma. But here we are. What a sad state of affairs.

What other word would you describe when people cry over "lack of diversity" when the story is set in a fantasy world that did not have such type of diversity to begin with?

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

#88

Post by prepend »

jpgvm wrote: post #37
oblio wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Probably all of the above plus it's a long term move. Amazon needs to build up a strong catalog and marquee TV shows are long term attractions. As an example, Mad Men, esp…

Last 2 seasons of GoT still hurt to think about. It's not the ending that hurts it's how it got there. The last 2 seasons probably should have been 3 full seasons instead of the barely 1.5 we got and had a lot more build up/Dany descent into madness/Bran having some relevance that would justify his elevation to ruler, etc. The suddenness of everything, the exposition, everything was just poorly executed. Too much mon…

I think the last two could have been 10 seasons and it would have been bad. The issue wasn’t cramming too much material, the issue is they didn’t have writers with ideas. They had been adapting GRRM and ran out of material to adapt and just went batty.

I think the reason it is so compressed is because they could just charge through it quickly and make it work.

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

#89

Post by adrianN »

cloutchaser wrote: post #79
workingon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never thought I’d live to see the day where people would unironically call equity dogma. But here we are. What a sad state of affairs.

Equity means equality of outcome, basically meaning you believe every person is equal in their results. This is religious dogma, because it's just not true. We are not the same, and you will always have differences in outcome in society. If you cannot see this, you are trapped in religious level dogmatic thinking. (PS: if you want to talk about equality, which we might perhaps call equality of opportunity, I'm all fo…

A charitable interpretation of what you call modern dogma is that people acknowledge that we're not all the same (that's what diversity is about, I think), but that the differences aren't predicted by gender or race or culture or whatever. That is of course also not very compatible with LotR.

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

#90

Post by kgwgk »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #49
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…

Speculatively, is there some tax optimization purpose? Eg, if you invest in content that builds technology that could be used for other purposes? Amazon is pretty amazing at tax optimization. But R&D tax writeoffs are pretty great, so not sure what it would accomplish. hmm, so maybe this is just cover for the UFO skunkworks.

> But R&D tax writeoffs are pretty great

Great like salary tax writeoffs and rent tax writeoffs. (And even if R&D isn’t expensed right away it will still have the same impact on taxes in the end. Now it will be depreciated in five years in the US.)

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