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.

Lego Lord of the Rings Pinball

Vladimir van Hoek has created an amazing, working Lord of the Rings pinball machine out of everyone's favorite building toy, Legos. Jump past the break to see more images of this fantastic creations.

NewStatesman on the Amazon Lord of the Rings TV series

NewStatesman has an article by Rebecca Rideal about the new Amazon Lord of the Rings series. Rideal makes some excellent points about the risks and benefits of adapting Middle-earth material to a TV series format; however, I'm not sure she has a full grasp on the legal situation regarding the different Tolkien books . . . she suggests more than once that Amazon might mine the Silmarillion for material, even though it is not at all clear that the Tolkien Estate is prepared to release the film rights for that book.

Additionally, she trots out the "Lord of the Rings is racist" argument towards the end of the article, and suggests that Tolkien's world will need significant updating to bring it up to 21st century standards. To me this smacks of a lack of understanding regarding why Tolkien developed his Legendarium in the first place, but I'm too tired to open up that debate right now. I'll save it that for another post down the road.

Later.

Review: Weta Workshop Mini Epics Wave 1, Frodo and Gimli

Ever since Weta Workshop announced their new line of Mini Epics vinyl characters, I'd been eyeing them. So over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, when I saw that they were having a sale, I quickly ordered the Frodo and Gimli figures, which were the two characters from the first wave that I was most excited about. Jump past the break to see photos of the unboxing and get my reaction to this new line of collectibles.

Screen Rant: HBO Passed Up the Chance to Create the New LOTR TV Series

Screen Rant just broke the news that HBO passed on the new Lord of the Rings TV series. The article explains that the entertainment company prefers to produce content for licenses that they own completely––so not surprisingly the complicated licensing and rights situation of Lord of the Rings (involving Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, the Tolkien Estate, and sometimes Middle-earth Enterprises) was not appealing to HBO. I've got to say I'm glad that HBO passed on Lord of the Rings. As well made as Game of Thrones is, I would hate to see Lord of the Rings tarnished with gratuitous violence and sex. Of course, there is still the possibility that Amazon will go that route . . . I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed, I suppose. Thanks to the Secret Fire Podcast for putting this info up on Twitter.

UPDATE: Here's an additional article by Den of Geek that basically covers the same news.

Later.

Collectibles: Funko Pop Lord of the Rings

Funko has announced the second wave of Lord of the Rings Pop! figures and new Lord of the Rings Mystery Minis. They look fantastic, and I'm especially excited for the Mystery Minis. It looks like the  Mystery Minis will be released in January and the Pop! figures in February. Some of the figures will be exclusives to certain retailers. Jump past the break to see more images!

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.

Remember the very first preview of the Lord of the Rings films?

TheOneRing.Net just shared this video on twitter, and I just had to put it up over here. I've actually been looking for this little teaser for a long time, since it's the first preview I ever saw for the Lord of the Rings Films . . . ah memories. Enjoy!