Production of Amazon’s long-awaited, multi-season television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” will take place in New Zealand. Since it was originally announced in 2017, so much hype has surrounded Amazon’s long-awaited, multi-season television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”
Like most upcoming Hollywood television shows, production on Amazon’s upcoming “Lord of the Rings” series was halted in early 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The closure came one month after the series started filming, and after New Zealand instituted protective immigration measures to protect the country from the coronavirus, including 14 days of compulsory self-isolation for citizens and visitors entering the country. Thankfully, “Lord of the Rings” was among several projects that had been granted a border exemption by New Zealand. The series’ crew aimed to resume filming in September and The Hollywood Reporter confirmed in December that production is underway in New Zealand.
The first season of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings TV show is reported to cost the retail giant a frankly difficult to imagine $465 million to produce. Just to save you from having to re-read that, this price tag is for just one season, and that there is not a missing decimal in the above number. “This will be the largest television series ever made,” New Zealand’s Minister for Economic Development and Tourism said.
But this honor was already something of a known quantity, after Amazon spent $250 million to secure the rights to the franchise in 2017, kicking off a round of stories declaring the not-yet-produced show “the most expensive” television production in history, with the big B number circulating its rumored five-season run.
The Amazon’s series, is expected to explore new storylines that occur before the events of the “The Fellowship of the Ring” film. When the Amazon series was originally announced, there was an assumption was that it would be a retelling of the trilogy of books, just like the movies. But then in March, it was confirmed that the series would actually be a prequel series, with rumor swirling that it would center on a young Aragorn (portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in the movies).
Amazon announced 20 cast members were joining the series: Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Maxim Baldry, Ian Blackburn, Kip Chapman, Anthony Crum, Maxine Cunliffe, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Thusitha Jayasundera, Fabian McCallum, Simon Merrells, Geoff Morrell, Peter Mullan, Lloyd Owen, Augustus Prew, Peter Tait, Alex Tarrant, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, and Sara Zwangobani.
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