Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke is confident that the market is big enough for both The Rings of Power and the newly-announced Lord of the Rings movies.
Amazon owns the TV rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, and the studio released the first of five planned seasons of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power last year. Salke is confident the series will succeed, telling Variety that the project already has a large fanbase behind it.
“We’ll see,” Salke said when asked how much Lord of the Rings would be too much for the market. “We love our original series. We’re extremely proud of it, and invested long-term. So, we definitely think there’s enough fan love to sustain ours for a long time.”
In 2021, Salke said The Rings of Power would need “a giant, global audience” to justify its price tag, with its first season budget set at $465 million. It seems that the studio has met that bar and surpassed it, having achieved the biggest premiere in Prime Video history.
However, Amazon acquired MGM in an $8.45 billion deal last year, with MGM film execs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy resigning shortly after. They were appointed co-chairs and CEOs of Warner Bros. Pictures — where more adaptations of LOTR and The Hobbit are planned.
Warner Bros. and New Line brokered a multi-year deal with Swedish company Embracer Group AB, allowing the companies to return to Middle-earth. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has confirmed that the deal includes “multiple” films based on Tolkien’s series.
Season 2 of The Rings of Power does not yet have a release date. IGN’s review of Season 1 noted that Amazon’s massive budget “produced some of the most remarkable sets and scenes ever on TV, creating a strong successor to Peter Jackson’s beloved LOTR trilogy.”
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
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