One show to rule them all
Lord of the Rings is returning to the screen. The small screen, that is.
This week Amazon announced that the Lord of the Rings TV show is officially set for a September 2022 release on its streaming service, offering a teaser picture for fans along with the announcement.
The LOTR TV show will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of the most recent and well-known adaptations of Tolkien's work; the six movies produced and directed by Peter Jackson from 2001 to 2014.
The original LOTR trilogy was an all-round cinematic success, scoring highly with both audiences and critics, as well as taking roughly $3bn at the global box office, on a budget of less than $300m. The second trilogy set in Middle-Earth, based on Tolkien's 1937 book The Hobbit, was also a solid success — doing well at the global box office despite slightly more lukewarm reviews, particularly with critics.
Spend money, to make money
Producers of the LOTR TV show will be hoping to replicate those results on the small screen, and they've certainly been set up for success, with the first season (just the first season) set to cost a truly astonishing $465m. For some context on how enormous that number is in the world of TV budgets; the final season of Game of Thrones cost just $90m, Disney spent "around" $100m on the first season of the Mandalorian and the first season of The Crown cost around $130m (source: The Verge).
