With a new Lord of the Rings series in the pipeline, Amazon will soon be taking audiences back to Middle-Earth. Obviously, in order to create a world this vast and detailed, the show will have to put quite a bit of money towards the project. New reports have come out that detail just how massive the budget for the show is, and it's currently set to be the most expensive TV show of all time, with the total budget for the first season being $450 million, and the projected budget for the entire show being around $1 billion. For comparison, each season of Game of Thrones cost $100 million to make, and the current most expensive show of all time - Netflix's The Crown - has a budget of $130 million per season.
The total budget of the original Lord of the Rings film series was only $281 million, and that's for nearly 10 hours of content. It makes sense that the show might cost a little bit more, since there is rumored to be 20 episodes in the first season, and if each episode is around an hour long, that's a lot of content being generated. The high price tag also means that (hopefully) each episode will look as good visually as the films did. However, no amount of money can make a piece of art good on its own. Amazon might be dumping money into this project, but they may not understand that it wasn't money that made the original series so beloved.
No matter how big the budget is, money can't save bad writing or a poorly constructed story. Obviously, at this point, no one knows what the story of Amazon's Lord of the Rings is going to be, and whether or not it's executed well will only be able to be judged once the show actually releases. In order for this series to work as well as Peter Jackson's movies did, the story will have to be great. The movies had the advantage of being able to follow Tolkien's writing because they already had the story laid out for them, and Amazon is making a new story that's simply set in Middle-Earth (and may be loosely based on some of Tolkien's writings). Hopefully, this series will be able to capture the same magic of the original movies in its script.
A perfect case in point of how a bigger budget doesn't automatically make a thing better is The Hobbit trilogy. Those movies had a combined budget of $745 million, and despite all of that money thrown their way, are still often criticized by fans for a poor story, and the films are nowhere as near beloved as The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit movies really suffered from a lot of studio interference, which hurt the overall product, and so hopefully this is something the Amazon series is able to avoid. The Hobbit movies prove that these Middle-Earth stories need good writing and a good vision in order to work, and that's not something that money can fix.
The way Lord of the Rings was shot made it feel like it was real and grounded, almost as though it was a piece of history, even though it's the history of a fantastical world. That groundedness is what attached audiences to the character and the story. The Hobbit movies suffered because they relied more heavily on CGI, rather than the practical effects and miniatures that were often used in the Lord of the Rings movies. It made The Hobbit films feel less grounded, and reminded the audience that they were watching a movie, rather than experiencing real events. Money can't fix the way the film is shot, or the overall creative vision of the show, and if the Amazon series isn't able to succeed in those areas, no amount of funds can bring the quality of the series back from that.
This is something that the Amazon series is going to have to avoid in order to make it feel anything like the original movies. They won't be able to recapture that magic if they don't manage to find the same grounded tone that the films did, and if they lean too heavily into CGI. Using CGI is often a bit cheaper, because with practical effects, sometimes something can go wrong and reshoots are required, where as CGI can just be changed digitally. However, it's clear that the Amazon series isn't lacking in funds, and hopefully, a portion of that gigantic budget is going towards practical effects and makeup.
The original movie trilogy isn't beloved because it's a big-budget extravaganza, but because it's a series that people connect with on a deep level, with characters that stick with the audience, and a certain magic about it that absorbs you into the world at every turn. The story is about resilience, love, destiny, and legacy, and those themes and the way that the characters connect to each other and struggle with their problems and positions is something that audiences get emotionally attached to. The films have that magical quality to them because it's clear in every frame that these movies were made with passion. From the cast to the crew behind the camera, it's evident that everyone loved the story and what they were doing, and it makes the movies feel like pieces of art that time and effort were put into, not just cash grabs.
It's too early to judge what the Amazon show will be like, and it would perhaps be unfair to call it a cash grab this early on, but it's worrisome that the massive budget is being heralded as a triumph. Sure, it gives them the space to make the series look really good, and the fact that they've hired lesser-known actors instead of big names is a sign that they're looking for quality and not just wanting the show to be a cash grab, but the money wasn't what made the original movie trilogy great. If the Lord of the Rings show can focus on its story, and on trying to capture a similar magical feeling, then perhaps they can pull it off. If not, that might be $450 million dollars down the drain.