We knew Amazon would pay a pretty penny to develop its own Lord of the Rings TV series, but they might as well raid Smaug’s lair. New estimates put the TV iteration of Middle Earth at $500 million (to start!), and all before Amazon has even assigned talent to the project.
Well, we knew Amazon was looking for its own Game of Thrones; we just didn’t think they’d aim this high. A full-scale Lord of the Rings TV series is in development at Warner Bros., with Amazon leading the pack in an understandably competitive bid.
He was forged in the fires of the deepest reaches of the BBC, honed and toughened in the crucible of TV and made-for-TV movies. The one director to rule them all — or at least, to take the helm for the upcoming J.R.R. Tolkien biopic Middle Earth — has been found, and while he won’t need to be cast in Mount Doom, he is still very strong.
New Zealand was where the majority of the Lord of the Rings movies where shot. So why not embrace being considered the closest place to Middle Earth? In a new safety video for Air New Zealand the characters from the Rings Trilogy are taught about airline safety procedures...