Amazon is investing a billion dollars for its first big-budget series

The highly anticipated series the SLord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, stamped Amazon, is in the book of records for the most expensive series in the world. One billion dollars: this is the budget for the new creation of the company’s streaming platform run by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The latter was also present at the world premiere of the series in Los Angeles on Monday August 15. He joined the show’s stars and producers at Culver Studios, where the first two episodes screened before a grand light show featuring dozens of illuminated drones. The series will be available on the platform from September 2.

Producer Lindsey Weber felt the billion-dollar budget was “a very catchy headline that people love to talk about” but she promised that the spectators would see “that the money is really on screen”. The colossal cost of the series is explained, according to her, by “the construction of five seasons, each lasting ten hours”.

“If you look at what it costs to make a feature film, by comparison, it’s a really good deal,” she added, referring to mega-budget blockbusters from Hollywood’s most prestigious studios. The ambitious adaptation of the universe created by JRR Tolkien in his novels began when Amazon Prime bought the rights for $250 million about five years ago.

The Rings of Power take place 4,000 years before the trilogy of films made by Peter Jackson and the original books, in a “Second Age”, a fictional historical period of the universe invented by Tolkien and about which he gave relatively little detail.

Morfydd Clark and Robert Aramayo play much-rejuvenated versions of the elves Galadriel and Elrond, characters already familiar to fans of the films of the Lord of the Rings. “It’s an epic adventure story, with universal themes, and it’s a real labor of love, we all worked very, very hard on it, and I hope people enjoy it,” commented Robert Aramayo at the premiere.