(Los Angeles) It has been called the most expensive series in the world, but Amazon, producer of the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powercalled the billion-dollar budget “a bargain,” at the world premiere Monday night in Los Angeles with CEO Jeff Bezos in attendance.
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The series, which will launch on September 2 on the Amazon platform, is considered to be a personal obsession of Mr. Bezos, the multi-billionaire founder of the online shopping site which launched into the streaming.
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 series is planning five seasons, each lasting ten hours.
Jeff Bezos joined the show’s stars and producers Monday night at Culver Studios in Los Angeles, where the first two episodes screened before a grand light show featuring dozens of illuminated drones.
Producer Lindsey Weber called the Billion Dollar Budget “a very catchy headline that people like to talk about”, but she promised viewers would see “that the money is really on the screen”. .
The staggering cost of the series is explained by “the construction of five seasons”, she told AFP from the red carpet.
“If you look at what it costs to make a feature film, by comparison, it’s a really good deal,” she added, referring to the blockbusters mega-budget from Hollywood’s most prestigious studios.
The Rings of Power take place 4000 years before Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films 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.
The cast of the series is relatively unknown globally.
Morfydd Clark and Robert Aramayo play much-rejuvenated versions of Galadriel and Elrond, characters already familiar to fans of the movies. Lord of the Rings.
“It’s an epic adventure story, with universal themes, and there’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 Monday.