Amazon is spending a lot of money on ‘Lord of the Rings’ series

The budget of the the Lord of the RingsAmazon Prime Video series has been unveiled. And the total cost of that turns out to be higher than the original Peter Jackson film trilogy combined.

In 2018, it was revealed that Amazon will be making multiple seasons of the show. The series takes place thousands of years before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, during the Second Age. It is an era that spanned 3441 years, during which, among other things, the One Ring was created and Sauron’s army was first defeated.

Twenty episodes
Amazon doesn’t do less than 20 episodes in the first season, and according to the stories, they have to do at least five seasons. But this epic series turns out to have a huge budget.

Reuters news agency reports that Amazon is spending around $ 465 million on the show’s first season. The combined budget of the first three films was $ 281 million, which made the series much more expensive. In return, we get a lot more television.

New Zealand is also giving the company a huge $ 116 million tax credit for withdrawals from the country. Economic Development and Tourism Minister Stuart Nash says it will land “a whole new wave of international tourism” experience following the series.

The country also benefits, of course; 700 cast and team members are kept within budget. The first season can probably be seen already this year, if not early next year.

By the way, if you look at the costs per hour of content, it’s still not too bad with the show’s budget. With a runtime of 9.3 hours, Jackson’s three films cost around $ 30 million an hour to make. Should the series be like, for example, the Amazon series The boys to get episodes of about an hour, it costs $ 23.25 million per episode. Which doesn’t mean it won’t be the most expensive series of all time!