Amazon, Warner Bros in Talks for LOTR Series Adaptation: Variety

{{12 hour + filming days, long location shoots, almost certainly lot more green screen work- at 80 Im amazed he even wants to reprise the role }}}

I seem to recall him talking about how the physicality of the role in The Hobbit was taxing on him, and they started filming that close to seven years ago. Part of me would like to think that maybe Gandalf, if he appears in the new show, will have less of an action role, but that seems a bit overly optimistic.

I think that was more the green screen thing that upset him, he didn't like acting to green golf balls, and PJ kinda forced him into it.
But regardless, Mckellen is Gandalf as far as I am concerned its fantastic news.

I was looking at a THR article about McKellen's possible return that was linked from TORn's blog and I noticed a tidbit (which itself linked to another article) that I don't recall reading about before, though it was first reported by THR more than a month ago so I could just be forgetful.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/will-amazons-lord-rings-series-be-tvs-expensive-show-all-time-1058129

Amazon's megadeal for The Lord of the Rings is believed to be for five seasons — plus a potential spinoff — with insiders putting the price tag for global rights at around $250 million. Once production budgets, casting, writers, producers and visual effects are factored in, the total for the Rings series — which will be set in Middle-earth and explore storylines preceding The Fellowship of the Ring — could hit $1 billion. Yes, $1 billion for a TV show.

We'd already heard about the spinoff before of course but I didn't recall the five season thing.

Geez. I get it, but that sounds terrible. How the heck do you fill five seasons with so little to work from?

I think you just answered the question.  They can do 5 seasons because they are not limited by published material.

Not exactly news so I'll put it in this thread, but Reuters apparently got their hands on a number of internal Amazon documents and had an interesting write-up:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-ratings-exclusive/exclusive-amazons-internal-numbers-on-prime-video-revealed-idUSKCN1GR0FX

In November, Amazon announced it will make a prequel to the fantasy hit “The Lord of the Rings.” The company had offered $250 million for the rights alone; production and marketing could raise costs to $500 million or more for two seasons, one of the people said.

At half a billion dollars, the prequel would cost triple what Amazon paid for “The Man in the High Castle” seasons one and two, the documents show. That means it would need to draw three times the number of Prime members as “The Man in the High Castle” for an equal payoff.

$500M minus the $250M they paid for the rights equals $125M in production and marketing for each season which sounds like a believable lower boundary if we assume that each season will have 10 episodes, like Game of Thrones and Amazon's own The Man in the High Castle. GOT is up to like $15M per episode for its (abbreviated) final season according to Variety, and while I wouldn't necessarily expect Amazon's Middle-earth series to immediately hit that range, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up at about $10M like GOT S6, since it's already a well-known brand and Bezos seems to be going all-in.

Separating the cost of filming equally by episode suggests that each episode is a movie unto itself, but when you get down to the actual details it would be incorrect to say something like, "well, we're going to stop with episode 7, because we can't afford episode 8." Much of the production costs of episode 8 are already shared with the other episodes in the series by way of certain sets being used, computer work already paid for, writers paid off, etc.

I know what marginal costs are, but taking into account the length of seasons (as one of many factors, sure) is relevant since without that context one would be left to assume that, for example, something happened to make HBO less confident in Game of Thrones' success since they're spending less money on each of the last two seasons than they did on S6.

That was kinda pissy, sorry.

No, it really wasn't pissy until you claimed it was. It all depends on tone of voice for that first phrase, which we can't hear!

{{{{ To think the BBC make Doctor Who on approx £500-800k per episode! (Which must give them rather tasty returns given the global audience size in comparison and in comparison to how much it costs to make other global shows like GoT or ST Discovery)}}}

It shows, though. Most of Dr Who are either interior sets or modern outdoor. The few alien or historical outdoor sets usually don't look so good. They are simply not spending money making things looks great, which is fine, but it will never feel like an epic. Not their goal.

Yeah Doctor Who is supposed to look bad!


Eldo, I was musing about how people inaccurately divvy up the cost of a show by episode, which is something I had not thought about before. It's a fine way to measure up the cost of a tv show for stuff like comparing seasons 6 and 8 of GoT, just specifically inaccurate. Oh, my point is that I was thinking out loud, not criticizing your observations. And like Halfy said you didn't sound pissy, just like Eldo.

{{Halfy- given the way the BBC budgets shows- its broken into departments and then sub-brackets. Who falls into the drama category- and within that it falls into the 'prestige drama' subcategory (being the BBC's top seller worldwide) the upshot of this is Who can only get the same budget as any other prestige drama made by the department. There is a pool of cash for each department and that's all they get to make all their programs- in a sense it doesn't matter to Who's budget how well the show actually does globally. If it makes ten times more than it costs to make the money doesn't go back to the show, it goes back to the BBC and next series of Who still just gets its money out of the same drama department pool of cash as all the other prestige dramas for that year.
Another downside to this is in the past it caused resentment within both the Who camp- who feel they should have more money given how much it makes and its global presence against shows with 10 times the budget- and within the drama department because Who is there every year and takes its slice of budget every year meaning something else isn't getting made. Those are the downsides to Who being a BBC property when it comes to budget.
Moffat pushed against this quite a bit and got more filming on location (Spain, America ect) and when he took over he revamped the look of the show in terms of direction, lighting and cameras which made it look a lot better and more modern.
Chibnall seems to have got more location filming (India and Africa so far that we know of) and again has got new cameras in to make it look more epic and more cinematic apparently, but at the cost of losing two episodes per series.

Besides for the budget I reckon they do pretty well on realizing locations and sometimes leave you wondering where, on shows costing ten times as much, is the money going?

Spoiler:

When you consider they do that on the same budget as other BBC drama, which usually only have half a dozen sets used every week and limited location shooting if any, its miraculous what they do pull off.}}}

Pettytyrant wrote:Besides for the budget I reckon they do pretty well on realizing locations and sometimes leave you wondering where, on shows costing ten times as much, is the money going?

The writing I guess, hahahaha

{{From what I can tell that's certainly not true of GoT! (also personally I think the last two series of Who contained two of the best written episodes in over 50 years of its history- Heavens Sent and World Enough and Time- no issues with the writing there, or the directing and especially not editing- all top notch  ) I am not at all sold n the idea of US style writers rooms- as well as them being more expensive and usually having to many cooks I fear it will, like a lot of US TV mean individual episodes lose the authors voice as it gets drowned out in others tampering with the idea.
I imagine the new Amazon Tolkien stuff will likewise be written by committee.}}}

They haven't even made the show yet, and I've already lost interest.

bungobaggins wrote:They haven't even made the show yet, and I've already lost interest.

I'm not entirely sure if I even had any interest to loose, not interested enough to watch this nor do I care enough to get annoyed by it.

I'm interested to see if it actually catches my interest. I'll be watching one episode at least. I only made it through 10 minutes of the new Star Trek series, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm interested in bringing crabbit to bear when talking about the series with other people when it comes out.

Forest Shepherd wrote:I'm interested in bringing crabbit to bear when talking about the series with other people when it comes out.

But will any of us actually even care enough anymore to bother tuning in by that point?

The Hobbit really screwed with my enthusiasm hormone.

malickfan wrote:But will any of us actually even care enough anymore to bother tuning in by that point?

If people continue to care enough to post about how much they don't care whenever there's new posts in this subforum, I think we've got a chance.

{{The laws of crabbit say if I have breath still left in me, and enough buckie, I will be here to have my crabbit say!!! So if the producers ever read this you better make it bloody good and true to source, and tone of source where there inevitably is no source, or I'll subject it to a harsh satire of cruel proportions! (Bet that's got them worried now!) }}