Amazon to Spend $500 Million on First Two Seasons of LOTR TV Series

Reuters and TrustedReviews are reporting the Amazon, which spent $250 million to purchase the rights to produce a Lord of the Rings television show, is now preparing to spend an additional quarter billion dollars on the first one or two seasons of the show. The total price tag of the series (which hasn't even begun production) is thus at $500 million, far more than was spent on the production of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I for one am very excited to hear that Amazon is preparing to heavily invest in their LOTR property. It makes sense . . . the movies were insanely popular, and television series like Game of Thrones prove that there is a huge appetite for big-budget fantasy TV series. Of course, while more money generally means better specially effects, props, etc., we have yet to learn anything about who will be writing, directing, and acting in this film, so I'm still only cautiously optimistic about this whole LOTR venture. We're in uncharted territory here . . .

Later.

The Lord of the Rings Appendices: A Primer

With the film and TV rights to the Silmarillion still officially off-limits (at least as far as we know), Amazon studios and Warner Bros. have two choices for developing a new Middle-earth story: first, they could create original stories, or second, they can expand on material found in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King. I think the second option is by far the most likely, since mining the appendices for stories will simultaneously appeal to long-time Tolkien fans and save time and money compared to developing new stories from scratch. Die-hard fans of Lord of the Rings are no doubt familiar with the material in the Appendices, but newer fans (especially those that were introduced to the stories through the movies) might not be as familiar with the stories and histories JRR Tolkien included in at the end of the trilogy. Because of this, I thought it would be a good time to review the stories in the Appendices in a series of blog posts, and talk about how Amazon Studies might adapt the tales for their TV series. Jump past the break to read the first post in this series, which will review the history behind the Appendices and give a brief overview of their contents.