Elijah Wood on Amazon’s insanely expensive Lord of the Rings show: “That’s crazy to me”
By Dan Selcke
Back in the early 2000s, New Line Cinema released a trilogy of movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, one per year until it wrapped in 2003. This was in the early days of the mega-franchise, and although we were still a ways off from ambitious projects like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the success of Peter Jackson’s Rings movies — and the eight Harry Potter movies, which started to come out around the same time — led directly into it.
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In total, Jackson’s trilogy cost $281 million. That was a lot of money back then — I mean, it’s still a lot of money now, but it’s nothing compared to what Amazon is paying to make a Lord of the Rings series; the shipping giant paid the Tolkien estate $250 million for the TV rights alone, plus another $250 to make the first two seasons, and who knows what after that. IndieWire caught up with Elijah Wood, who played the unassuming hero-hobbit Frodo Baggins in the original trilogy, to get his thoughts:
"That’s crazy to me…That wouldn’t have happened back then because the Tolkien estate didn’t know what they had as much as they do now. It’s all a product of the world they live in. They know now what they have, they know how lucrative it is."
Indeed, having an epic story that someone can stretch into a wide-ranging movie or TV series is all the rage now. But whereas Jackson’s Rings movies came out at a time when not many people were doing that sort of thing, the market is now crowded, with the MCU dominating the big screen and Game of Thrones and its progeny ruling the small. There’s a lot more pressure to be a big hit, which potentially means more studio control. According to Wood, the first trilogy had an “independent movie” vibe on set despite the high price tag, but in today’s Hollywood, that’s harder to do. “Certainly some of the Marvel movies do have a soul,” he mused. “But I don’t know. Franchises are tough. It’s hard to make eye candy that makes a lot of money that’s also artistically satisfying.”
"We have no idea what this is going to be like, and it could be great. Maybe they’ll go to New Zealand and shoot a bit there for visual continuity. Who knows? ‘Lord of the Rings’ just felt like a movie made by this small cottage industry out of New Zealand that had never made anything on that scale before. It’s a completely untested thing. But I’ll be watching. I’m curious."
If you’re curious, it looks like the show is shooting in Scotland, although that doesn’t mean it couldn’t stop by New Zealand, too. Like Game of Thrones, I expect this show to film all over the world.
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I think Amazon’s show, which is set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story during the Second Age of Middle-earth, will be a proving ground for just how big a fantasy show like this can get. With the amount of money Amazon is spending on it, it pretty much needs to be a monster hit to make back its budget. If it fails, it could usher help usher in the end of the era of the mega-franchise. If it succeeds, well…how much bigger can Hollywood go?
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