Amazon: Lord of the Rings show “making great progress,” The Expanse season 4 to land this year

If you’re a fan of sci-fi and fantasy, you’re probably gonna want star paying attention to Amazon, because they are going hard after your dollars. The shipping giant has a number of huge genre shows in the pipeline, including a lavishly expensive series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and an adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time novels.

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Speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke talked about Amazon’s plans to win the battle of your eyeballs. She says there’s “no timetable” for when the Lord of the Rings show comes out, but assures fans that the studio is “making great progress” and taking the time to do it right. “We’ve worked hard to establish Amazon as the best home for talent,” she explained. “We’re taking a curated approach to programming.”

She may be drawing a comparison with Netflix, which has a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to programming. With shows based on The Witcher and The Chronicles of Narnia on the way, Netflix is pushing into this realm, too, but will it be able to compete with Amazon’s war chest?

Salke had similar things to say about the Wheel of Time show. “We’re building an incredible team,” she said. “We’re focusing on making it our creative best — so we don’t have a specific timeframe for that series.”

Getting a little more specific, you may have heard that Amazon picked up the sci-fi thriller The Expanse — based on a book series co-written by Ty Franck, a former assistant to George R.R. Martin — after SyFy cancelled the show in 2018. “We’re hoping [to premiere the] new season before end of the year,” said co-head of Amazon Television Vernon Sanders. “We can’t wait for fans to see what their love has helped us build. We’re aiming for before 2019 is over.” Sign us up.

Amazon has some non-franchise stuff in the works, too, including a show based on Naomi Alderman’s acclaimed 2016 novel The Power, about a day when every teenage girl on Earth suddenly develops the ability to electrocute people at will. Cue the press release:

"Over our first season and beyond, the series will follow its cast of remarkable characters from London to Arizona, Nigeria to Moldova, as the Power evolves from a tingle in teenagers’ collarbones to a complete reversal of the power balance of the world."

Soon enough, we’ll be living in a post-Game of Thrones world. Can Amazon fill the gap?

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h/t SyFy Wire