There can hardly be a better sales argument: Amazon is said to have spent more than a billion dollars on the series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, which was launched on the in-house streaming service Prime Video on 2 September
Amazon and the billion dollar series: Since 2018, this huge number has been in the headlines in connection with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, and now Middle-earth fans and Prime subscribers around the world can finally see whether Amazon’s investment has paid off. “The Rings of Power” has been available to stream on Prime Video since September 2, 2022.
In this article you can find out how exactly you can watch the series and why – as is actually always the case with major Amazon series – there is once again an unusual release rhythm:
But what’s the deal with the billion-dollar budget anyway? Did Amazon really spend that much money on a single series season? The answer, of course, is a little more complicated than that.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power drops tonight with some high expectations, and even higher price tag.
Holding the title of “the most expensive TV series of all time”, the new LOTR series cost Amazon a whopping $715M to obtain the IP rights and shoot the first season. pic.twitter.com/8zhYhd00lc
– Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) September 1, 2022
IS “THE RINGS OF POWER” REALLY THE MOST EXPENSIVE SERIES OF ALL TIME?
Fixed: Amazon paid about $250 million for the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” novels (including the appendices). Just for the rights, mind you, not including production costs, marketing and so on.
That alone is more than most other expensive series have cost per season: The MCU series “WandaVision” and “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier”, for example, are said to have cost 25 million per episode. And “Game Of Thrones” itself cost “only” 15 million per episode in season 8.
Moreover, the first season of “The Rings of Power” alone is said to have cost 462 million dollars, as Vanity Fair magazine reports. However, tax benefits amounting to 108 million dollars, which the New Zealand government granted for the fact that the filming took place in New Zealand, as was the case with the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies, still have to be deducted from this.
And many of the costs of the first season will of course also pay off in later seasons – a large part of the sets, the costumes and weapons and generally the ideas developed should continue to be used. In total, Amazon has committed to five seasons (plus a possible spin-off), which are also estimated to cost between 100 and 150 million per season.
Whichever way you look at it, the billion-dollar budget definitely works out, just not for a single season, but for the whole series. And “The Rings of Power” Season 1 should then also have the highest costs per episode ever for a series.
