Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings”
Photo: PROMOTION. All rights reserved.
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“The Lord Of The Rings – The Rings Of Power” is the most expensive series of all time. The fact that Amazon’s streaming service Prime Video was awarded the contract for the series was by no means agreed. Jeff Bezos, Amazon boss and the second richest person in the world, was willing to invest huge sums in the project. But the decision on the rights still rested with JRR Tolkien’s heirs. Now new details about the ideas of the competition have become known.
Again “Hollywood Reporter” reported, the top bid in the race, at $250 million, came not from Amazon but from Netflix. Amazon was a mere ten million below that. Instead of the prequel approach of “The Rings of Power”, Netflix apparently wanted to create an entire television universe, for example with series about Gandalf and Aragorn. “They took the Marvel approach,” says an insider, “and the heirs completely freaked out about it.”
HBO, on the other hand, wanted to retell the story of the “Third Age” of Middle-earth – the time in which the “Lord of the Rings” novels take place. That would probably have amounted to a series remake of the film trilogy by Peter Jackson. Telling the same story again was probably not interesting enough for the heirs. Admittedly, the family’s relationship to Jackson’s films was not the best – Tolkien’s son Christopher in particular found that they disfigured his father’s work. But after Christopher’s death in 2020, a new generation has had a say, which probably has less reservations about adaptations.
Surcharge for the underdog candidates
It apparently paid off for Amazon to rely on rather unknown names that had the right nose. Showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay had previously only worked on non-film scripts. “The people we were up against had résumés that, on paper, suited the assignment better,” McKay told The Hollywood Reporter. “We were the underdog candidates.”
In the interview, he also rejects the accusation that the creators of the series are only concerned with money. “The cynical position that this is just a money maker is the hardest thing to hear,” McKay said. “Oh my god, it’s the opposite. This is the most honest production. It’s not just a job for anyone to do for money. This is a work with a lot of love behind it.”
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