One season will cost four times as much as Game of Thrones.
The Lord of the Rings TV show’s huge budget has been defended by Amazon.
Amazon’s forthcoming series will be one of the most expensive shows in history, with the first season alone costing approximately $465m US dollars.
In November 2017, the streaming service made a five season production commitment worth at least $1 billion.
Amazon chief Jennifer Salke has acknowledged that this is a lot of money to spend on one show, but has defended the figure as there is a specific reason behind it – namely, fleshing out the world of Middle Earth.
It’s worth noting that Amazon paid $250m for rights to JRR Tolkien’s source material, bringing their current overall Lord of the Rings investment to $715m.
A point of comparison for the show’s budget is that HBO’s epic fantasy series Game of Thrones cost roughly $100 million to produce each season. In the first season, episodes cost around $6m to make. This figure rose to approximately $15m per episode in season eight.
“This is a full season of a huge world-building show,” Salke continued. “The number is a sexy headline or a crazy headline that’s fun to click on, but it is really building the infrastructure of what will sustain the whole series.”
Salke added: “There’s a lot of wooing and we have to make decisions on where we want to stretch and where we want to draw the line.”
She admitted that “a lot” of people “need to watch” the show for Amazon to make its money back.
“A giant, global audience needs to show up to it as appointment television, and we are pretty confident that that will happen,” Salke said.