As Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max continue to raise the bar for quality television, other streaming services are looking to stay competitive with them. Amazon appears to be making that effort by pouring a record amount of money into its Lord of the Rings series, which studio head Jennifer Salke recently addressed.

Amazon is hoping its highly-anticipated Lord of the Rings television series will give it a much-needed boost in today's cutthroat entertainment industry. In fact, it believes in the project so much that it is putting a massive amount of money behind its first season - $465 million, to be exact.

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In 2017, Amazon pledged $1 billion dollars for a five-season run, making Lord of the Rings one of the most expensive shows in history. While some may consider such a budget to be excessive and unnecessary, Amazon chief Salke believes it is the only way to give justice to the franchise and its incredibly intricate elements. "This is a full season of a huge world-building show," she added. "The number is a sexy headline or a crazy headline that’s fun to click on, but it is really building the infrastructure of what will sustain the whole series."

Lord of the Rings

To illustrate just how big the budget for the Lord of the Rings series is, HBO's Game of Thrones (which is also a world-building show) had a budget of approximately $100 million per season. That's less than a quarter of what Amazon has put forward for the first season of the Lord of the Rings show. Even more important to note is that the cost of episodes will likely increase with every subsequent season that is released. Needless to say, a whole lot of people will need to tune in and watch the show in order for Amazon to make its money back. While the Lord of the Rings does have a rather sizeable fanbase, Salke believes it will need to convert new watchers to form "a giant, global audience." She says the company is "pretty confident" that they can make that happen.

Not much has been revealed about the show's plot, but we do know that it will follow "the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history." The story will be set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, and fans can expect to see some familiar characters from the books. That said, it looks like Amazon has cast mostly up-and-comers to star in the project, including Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Joseph Mawle, Lenny Henry, Morfydd Clark, and Peter Mullan.

While the cost of the series could certainly result in the Lord of the Rings series being doomed no matter how well-received it may be, Salke does have a point. At this time, television audiences are accustomed to shows with movie-sized budgets and anything less for J.R.R. Tolkien's revered stories would probably not go over well.

The Lord of the Rings television series is currently in production.

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter