Now we understand why Smaug was hoarding gold. We understand that budgets for big shows have exploded, but it is hard to image a studio spending this much. The upcoming Lord of the Rings series being made by Amazon Prime Video will cost the online retailer $465 million to produce the first season alone, according to reports.
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As was the case for both movie trilogies made by Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings series is being shot in New Zealand. According to New Zealand’s Minister for Economic Development and Tourism: “This will be the largest television series ever made.”
In an effort to compete with streaming giants like Netflix and Disney+, Amazon is throwing billions into Prime Video. As we’ve said many times before, we are reverting to the old days where we’ll probably pay for several streaming services in order to watch everything we want to.
Amazon has already spent $250 million to secure the rights to Lord of the Rings before even deciding what they will do with it, which was back in 2017. Peter Jackson’s last movie trilogy, The Hobbit, currently holds the record for the most expensive movie production in history, having cost $623 million for three films.
To put these numbers into context, let’s look at some other expensive productions you may be aware of:
- The final and most expensive season of Game of Thrones cost $90 million, or $15 million per episode to produce.
- Disney spent “around $100 million” on the first season of The Mandalorian. We aren’t sure what the subsequent seasons are costing them.
- Disney’s Marvel series are reported to cost as much as $25 million per episode which, considering there are nine episodes of WandaVision, would max out at $225 million.
It remains to be seen if this capital expenditure is worth it for Amazon in the long run. They will need to sign up a lot of subscribers to make this spending on a series a good investment.
