The show, which has yet to get an official title, is based
loosely on J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books but
takes place thousands of years before the events of those titles.
“I can’t express enough just how excited we all are to take
our global audience on a new and epic journey through Middle-earth!” Jennifer
Salke, head of Amazon Studios, said in a statement. “Our talented producers,
cast, creative and production teams have worked tirelessly in New Zealand to
bring this untold and awe-inspiring vision to life.”
The anticipated series has been in the works at Amazon Prime
Video since at least 2017, when the service first bought the rights to The Lord
of the Rings for a reported $250 million. It’s expected to be an immensely
expensive project, with a reported $1 billion price tag. As with many major
projects, production was halted in early 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic
before resuming later in the year.
Amazon Prime Video is aiming to make the series a global
phenomenon and has slowly announced a huge cast of international talent. As
with all of the streaming service’s programming, the show will be available at
no additional cost to Amazon Prime members, which the company sees as an
investment in keeping people buying items on the Amazon platform.
The upcoming series is a prime example of streaming services
latching onto tried-and-true intellectual property and building out lucrative
franchises. And The Lord of the Rings is certainly tried-and-true: Amazon
customers voted it their favorite book of the millennium in 1999, and it has
sold more than 150 million copies, besides being a beloved and high-grossing
film series in the early 2000s.
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