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Amazon’s LOTR Could Cost $500m

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16 March 2018

By Alex Khalil

In November, it was revealed that Amazon would be creating a new Lord of the Rings TV show. The company paid a staggering $250 million for the rights alone and now report it could cost a further $250m to produce and market the show.

This comes from Reuters, which added that $500m could be the full price for two seasons of the show. This figure apparently also covers the rights-fee that Amazon paid. Other TV and streaming services tried to hop on the LOTR train, including HBO and Netflix, but Amazon won them out.

Peter Jackson made his name through the popular movie series. It’s a rite of passage to binge all three extended editions in a day.

This figure is three times what Amazon paid for the first two seasons of The Man in High Castle, one of its original shows. The estimated budget for that was around $72 million. It reportedly helped add 1.15 million people to its Amazon Prime subscription. By this logic, a Lord of the Rings series needs to do far better than that for it to pay off.

It doesn’t seem too impossible, however, given that Lord of the Rings is one of the most successful franchises ever. The movies from Peter Jackson combined made $2.5 billion, with The Hobbit movies made more than that, standing at $3 billion.

Plus, given the lack of Lord of the Rings content of late, we’d bet fans would eat it up.

While no other movies have been announced, there is a movie in the works about Tolkien’s relationship with his wife Edith Bratt and his time in World War 1.

So that’s something at least.

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