The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Amazon will spend roughly $465 million for just the first season of the show.
That’s far above previous reported estimates that pegged the fantasy drama as costing an already record-breaking $500 million for multiple seasons of the show.
By comparison, HBO’s Game of Thrones cost roughly $100 million to produce per season, with its per-episode cost starting at around $6 million for season one and eventually rising to around $15 million per episode in season eight.
The eye-popping Lord of the Rings price tag almost certainly doesn’t reflect season one’s production cost alone. The rights to the Tolkien property cost an estimated $250 million. Plus there are considerable startup costs when bringing Middle-earth to life — such as sets, costumes and props — that will be used throughout the series.
Amazon picked up the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved Middle-earth franchise in 2017, and early on it was estimated the show could end up eventually becoming the world’s first TV show to cost $1 billion after factoring in the rights deal, production and marketing for multiple seasons.
The official description: The Lord of the Rings “brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. 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. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”