Amazon spending $464 million for first season of Lord of the Rings prequel

The Lord of the Rings franchise has become a global juggernaut. From the original trilogy, whose final installment, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was the first fantasy film to claim a Best Picture Oscar in 2003, to the sprawling set of The Hobbit films, the movies of Middle-Earth have been among the highest-grossing franchises of all time.

It only makes sense to bring audiences back to the world of Middle-earth after the financial and critical success the franchise has produced. So, much like other popular fantasy franchises (Game of Thrones, The Witcher), The Lord of the Rings will also be getting the prequel treatment. A series set to take place thousands of years before Frodo and company take the One Ring to Mordor is currently in production at Amazon, and its hefty price tag will likely break records.

The first season of the new Lord of the Rings sequel is reported to cost over $464 million dollars, blowing past other fantasy epics like Thrones, which is the current high bar for prestige fantasy.

According to CNBC, Game of Thrones was one of the most expensive shows on TV. While one episode of Game of Thrones cost around $5 million, and an entire season around $50 million, Amazon Prime upped the ante. Announced by New Zealand’s minister for economic development and tourism, Stuart Nash, Amazon has already spent an estimated $650 million in New Zealand dollars to produce the series. In American dollars, that is $464 million. This is just for a single season.

As of now, the plans are to shoot five seasons and possibly a spin-off, with a second season already greenlit in 2019 while the first season was still in pre-production.

You can do the math on that yourself.

There are financial perks about shooting a series in New Zealand. For one thing, according to Entertainment Weekly, film productions in the country get a 20% rebate on their entire budget, and Amazon applied to receive an extra 5% by agreeing to invest in New Zealand’s economy in exchange for the high budget. This also helps support the enormous size of the production and translates to $114 million, or $160 million New Zealand dollars, according to Vulture.

When Amazon bought the rights to the franchise in 2017, it was thought then that it had the potential of becoming the first television series to cost $1 billion dollars.

To put things more into perspective, ScreenRant listed that shows such as Westworld, Rome, The Get Down, and Friends, cost $9 to $10 million an episode. Others, such as ER, The Crown, The Morning Show, See, and The Mandalorian all cost about $15 million per episode, which is roughly the equivalent of Game of Thrones last season.

While The Pacific cost a tremendous $20 million per episode and the Disney+ Marvel series such as Wandavision, Loki, Hawkeye, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier cost an immense $25 million per episode, these budgets all seem to dwarf in comparison to the colossal production costs of the prequel series to The Lord of the Rings. 

Amazon Studios describes the prequel as, “beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.”

An ensemble cast has already been signed on, including Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Power, Spartacus), Benjamin Walker (Heart of the Sea), and Peter Mullan (Westworld), as well as Owain Arthur (Kingdom), Nazanin Boniadi (Counterpart), Ismael Cruz Cordova (The Catch), and Game of Thrones alums Joseph Mawle and Robert Aramayo.

The Hollywood Reporter states that the show is planned for a debut later in 2021.