The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power looks pretty impressive in some of the trailers released by Amazon in the lead-up to the show’s release, and that’d better be the case because the company ran up quite the cheque to produce what will be the most expensive series of all time.
To claim that milestone, The Wall Street Journal claims that Amazon spent $715 million making the Lord of the Rings series' first season, which translates to $89.37 million for each of the eight episodes that will start releasing on Prime Video in September. More interestingly, the business outlet notes that while the staggering figure is unheard of in the realm of television, all that money doesn’t seem like much when divided by the number of annual Prime subscriptions in the United States alone, since 5.1 million Prime users spending 139 per year is enough to foot the bill.
With over 200 million Amazon Prime subscribers worldwide, unlike other streamers, Amazon doesn't need to draw in new users. However, The Rings of Power is the biggest bet the company has made on any type of content, especially when adding the upfront cost of scoring the rights to make Rings of Power from the Tolkien estate and heirs for $250 million. The report does not specify if these numbers already take The Rings of Power's marketing budget into consideration, which would only add more to that tally.
Before the Lord of the Rings prequel came along, the most expensive TV productions ever were Stranger Things ($30 million per episode), which raised its budget somewhat recently when compared to the show’s beginnings, as well as Disney's crop of Marvel Studios series, whose VFX add up fast and tend to be in the $25 million region. The rest of the record-setters are The Mandalorian ($12.515m) as well as HBO's The Pacific, Band of Brothers, and Game of Thrones. Meanwhile, the likes of Friends and E.R. continue to provide some '90s representation.
Besides the goal of establishing Amazon as a reputable studio and being able to turn Rings of Power into the type of franchise that can spawn more content, having a confessed fan of J.R.R. Tolkien like Jeff Bezos certainly played towards that massive budget. At least for now, Rings of Power has passed its first test with critics, as most of the reviewers who got early access came out pretty satisfied with Rings of Power, and many marvelled at what that towering budget looks like on screen.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere on Amazon Prime Video starting on September 2, 2022.
Source: The Wall Street Journal