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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Nov 3, 2017 21:08:48 GMT -6
variety.com/2017/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1202606519/#utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=social_bar&utm_content=bottom&utm_id=1202606519‘Lord of the Rings’: Amazon, Warner Bros. in Talks for Series Adaptation (EXCLUSIVE) Warner Bros. Television and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien are in talks with Amazon Studios to develop a series based on the late author’s “The Lord of the Rings” novels. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is said by sources with knowledge of the situation to be personally involved in the negotiations, which are still in very early stages. No deal has been set. The studio and the Tolkien estate have been shopping a series based on the classic fantasy novels and their assortment of hobbits, wizards, and warriors, sparking a competitive situation from which Amazon has emerged as the frontrunner. Representatives for Amazon and Warner Bros. declined to comment. It is uncommon for Bezos — known to be a fan of high fantasy and science fiction — to involve himself personally in dealmaking for Amazon Studios. But talks for “The Lord of the Rings” come at an uncommon moment for the e-commerce giant’s video-entertainment division. Last month Amazon Studios flushed its executive ranks, with president Roy Price, head of scripted Joe Lewis, and head of unscripted Conrad Riggs all departing. Price’s departure came just days after he was suspended on the heels of a sexual harassment allegation made against him by a producer on the company’s original series “The Man in the High Castle.” Lewis and Riggs’ departures followed a week later. To Combat New Media Players, TV Studios Sign Key Producers to Lucrative Overall Deals Amazon Studios, IMDb Moving to Historic Culver Studios Site But the pursuit of “The Lord of the Rings” is in line with a new programming mandate dictated this year by Bezos, who, months before Price departed, ordered him to shift Amazon Studios away from niche, naturalistic series such as “Transparent” and “Mozart in the Jungle” and toward large-scale genre programming with potential for broad international appeal. As part of that shift, Amazon canceled two series, “Z: The Beginning of Everything” and “The Last Tycoon,” and began shifting resources away from Lewis’ development team and to a unit led by event-series exec Sharon Tal Yguado. With Lewis’ departure, Tal Yguado was named head of scripted series, reporting to Price’s interim replacement, Amazon Studios COO Albert Cheng. The fact that a “Lord of the Rings” series is being shopped by Warner Bros. marks a thaw in the relationship between the studio and the Tolkien estate, which in July settled a massive lawsuit that had dragged on since 2012. The dispute, with Tolkien’s heirs and publisher HarperCollins on one side and Warner Bros. — which produced director Peter Jackon’s live-action feature film adaptations of “The Lord of the Rings” and its prequel, “The Hobbit” — on the other, stemmed from the use characters from the movies in online slot machines and other games. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but a legal filing stated that no fees or costs were to be awarded by the court and that no party was entitled to recover fees or costs.
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Nov 3, 2017 22:18:29 GMT -6
deadline.com/2017/11/lord-of-the-rings-series-eyed-warner-bros-tv-amazon-1202201636/'Lord Of The Rings' TV Series Shopped With Huge Rights Payment Attached UPDATED: In a deal that is expected to dwarf any TV series to date, I hear the J.R.R. Tolkien estate has been shopping a possible series based on the late author’s The Lord of the Rings novels with a whopping price tag attached. I hear Amazon, Netflix and HBO had been approached about the project, which comes with an upfront rights payment said to be in the $200 – $250 million range. That is just for the rights, before any costs for development, talent and production. It is a payment that has to be made sight unseen as there is no concept, and there are no creative auspices attached to the possible series. (I hear the pitch at HBO involved producer Jane Tranter whose company is partially owned by HBO and Sky but the general package has no talent attached.) On top of that, the budget for a fantasy series of that magnitude is likely to be $100-$150 a season. I hear that Amazon and Netflix are still in the running while HBO, home of blockbuster fantasy series Game Of Thrones, passed awhile back because of the the finances of the deal that many industry observes call “insane.” Additionally, industry sources note that there are already three great Lord Of the Rings movies and a total of six movies in the world made, along with the Hobbit films. Plus, I hear that the rights for a TV series in the Lord of the Rights do not encompass all characters and are limited. Given Amazon’s big push to launch a big fantasy series of the scope of Game Of Thrones, which has been spearheaded by honcho Jeff Bezos, and Amazon’s deep coffers, the company is considered a leading contender for a Lord Of the Rings series. (For context, the price tag for the rights to Lord Of the Rings is what Bezos payed for Washington Post.) Bezos has been hands-on involved in the matters of entertainment division Amazon Studios following the purge of its top executives, led by Roy Price, and has been taking meetings and making calls to agents over the past two weeks. Amazon’s talks for a Lord of the Rings TV series were first reported by Variety. The possible Lord of the Rings TV series is done in conjunction with Warner Bros. TV, whose film studio counterpart produced the feature trilogy in the 2000s. The TV studio would not comment on the talks, which are preliminary. The TV series pitch comes on the heels of Warner Bros. and the Tolkien estate in July settling an $80 million rights dispute over The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings after a grueling five-year court battle. The Tolkien estate and publisher HarperCollins filed the massive lawsuit in November 2012 against Warner Bros., its subsidiary New Line and Middle-earth Enterprises — a division of Rings’ Hobbit rightsholder the Saul Zaentz Co. — claiming copyright infringement and breach of contract over video games, online slot machines and other digital merchandising. Launched at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy was a global phenomenon. Starring Elijah Wood, In McKellen, Liv Tyler, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom and others, the three films combined to gross more than $2.9 billion worldwide. LOTR: The Two Towers was released in 2002, and The Return of the King arrived the following year, becoming only the second film to top $1 billion worldwide. That third installment won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay. The previous two combined to win six Academy Awards in crafts categories. Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Mar 15, 2018 23:00:44 GMT -6
www.cbr.com/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-series-500-million/Two Seasons of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Show Could Cost $500 Million Amazon committed to a multi-season Lord of the Rings TV series for their Prime platform late last year, and it appears the streaming (among other things) giant is willing to sink a significant sum of money into the endeavor. Like, a significant sum. According to an internal study performed by Reuters, the Lord of the Rings TV series could end up costing the electronic commerce behemoth in the neighborhood of $500 million — or more — for the first two seasons alone. While the projection appears to be quite staggering, half of the total, $250 million, was spent on acquiring the rights to make the series in the first place, with the remainder of the projection being attributed to marketing and production costs. The study performed by Reuters analyzed the metrics for 19 Prime Original series using Amazon’s internal documents, which detailed the cost, the viewership and the number of new Prime subscribers drawn in by each series. Amazon’s Prime Originals have reportedly accounted for nearly 25% of all new Prime subscriptions from late 2014 through early 2017. Amazon utilizes a metric known as “first stream” to evaluate the success, or failure, of a Prime Original. The metric uses the production and marketing costs of a Prime Original and divides that total by the number of new subscribers who streamed that specific Prime Original as their first series. The lower the number, the better the rating. The first season of the Prime Original series The Grand Tour drew in over 1.5 million new subscribers, scoring the best rating at $49 per subscriber. Comparing that total with the cost of an Amazon Prime subscription at $99, The Grand Tour is providing some serious bang for its buck. The projected marketing and production costs on the first two seasons of the Lord of the Rings prequel series are set to be nearly three times what Amazon spent on the Prime Original series The Man in the High Castle, which has a first stream rating of $63 per subscriber. The Lord of the Rings series will need to draw in nearly three times as many new subscribers to net the same yield. The prequel series remains in the very early stages of its development with no casting information or production details known, though there is reportedly potential for spinoff shows. Additional details will be released as the series enters production. (via IGN)
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Apr 5, 2018 23:59:03 GMT -6
www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/how-lord-rings-tv-series-landed-at-amazon-not-netflix-1099213Inside Amazon's $250M 'Lord of the Rings' Deal: "It's Very Much a Creature of the Times" After battling Netflix for rights to bring the popular series to the small screen, the network's groundbreaking negotiation guaranteed a five-season commitment of J.R.R. Tolkien's adaptation, making it the "most expensive TV series ever." Nearly 45 years after his death, J.R.R. Tolkien scored the biggest Hollywood deal of 2017. Since the British author doesn't return phone calls anymore, it took a phalanx of lawyers and dealmakers to bring to fruition what is poised to be the most expensive TV show ever. On Nov. 13, Amazon Studios beat out Netflix for a $250 million rights deal with the Tolkien estate, publisher HarperCollins and New Line Cinema that includes a five-season commitment to bring The Lord of the Rings to the small screen. With the clock ticking, Amazon must be in production within two years, according to the terms of the pact. When production expenses like casting, producers and visual effects are factored in, the series is expected to cost north of $1 billion. Within weeks of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos' directive last September to his since-ousted content chief Roy Price to bring in the next Game of Thrones, negotiations were underway that also involved publisher HarperCollins and New Line. Greenberg Glusker attorney Matt Galsor, who served as the chief architect of the deal and repped the Tolkien estate, was hammering out terms that include a potential spinoff. "This is the most complicated deal I've ever seen," Galsor says, "but it was handled relatively quickly, in a way that brought the parties together in a close relationship. It was tough, but everybody liked each other and felt like a team more as the deal closed." Dan Scharf, Amazon's head of television business affairs, ran point for the streaming giant. New Line and parent Warner Bros. never had TV rights to Rings, but Amazon may use material from the films, so New Line president and chief content officer Carolyn Blackwood and Warner Bros. Picture Group chairman Toby Emmerich were brought into the talks. The Tolkien book rights have a long and complicated history. Since the author originally sold rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1969, they have at points passed through the hands of MGM, producer Saul Zaentz and Miramax before New Line released Peter Jackson's six mega-hit adaptations, starting in 2001. Those films have earned $5.85 billion worldwide at the box office, underscoring the property's enduring popularity. As for whether Jackson is involved in the TV series as an executive producer remains to be seen and would be up to him. His attorney Peter Nelson was not a part of the 2017 rights negotiations but recently helped start a dialogue between Jackson and Amazon."It's very much a creature of the times," Nelson says of the Amazon deal. "We are in an era where streamers are bidding up the price of programming. I think Amazon is taking a page out of the studios' emphasis on franchises. They also are realizing that with the overproduction of television, you need to get the eyeballs to the screen, and you can do that with franchise titles." So far, there's no sign of Bob Weinstein or his estranged brother Harvey trying to elbow their way into the deal. The estranged brothers — the latter embroiled in an epic sex harassment and abuse scandal that was unfolding as the Amazon deal-making was in high gear — could have made noise. After all, they inked an agreement with New Line in 1998 while they controlled the Tolkien film rights at Miramax. The Weinsteins were profit participants in the Rings trilogy, and they used their 1998 agreement as the basis to sue for a piece of the Hobbit films. Ultimately, they collected $12.5 million from the first Hobbit film, but nothing from the next two releases. "We won," says a studio source, "and they didn't get a dime for two or three." Still, at least one deal insider wouldn't be surprised if either of the Weinsteins surfaced in the future to make a claim. A version of this story first appeared in the April 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. subscribe.hollywoodreporter.com/sub/?p=THR&f=saleb&s=IH1402HR20
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Apr 6, 2018 8:19:42 GMT -6
icv2.com/articles/news/view/40093/amazon-could-spend-1-billion-lord-ringsAMAZON COULD SPEND $1 BILLION ON 'LORD OF THE RINGS' For Five Seasons Posted by ICv2 on April 6, 2018 @ 1:49 am CT The numbers on Amazon’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings series keep going up. Just a couple of weeks ago, internal documents obtained by Reuters revealed that Amazon could spend $250 million on the first two seasons, plus the $250 million it paid for the rights (see "Friday Geek TV Round-Up"). Now it’s revealed that the full five-season run could cost Amazon north of $1 billion, when all costs, including casting, producers, and effects, are included, according to Hollywood Reporter. Amazon may use material from the six-film movie franchise directed by Peter Jackson, according to the report, but Jackson is still in early stages of discussions with Amazon about potential involvement as an executive producer. Amazon is required to begin production within two years.
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on May 18, 2018 17:02:52 GMT -6
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Jul 28, 2018 20:11:52 GMT -6
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