Jeff Bezos: Producing The Rings of Power “goes beyond” making money

We’re headed back to Middle-earth. Amazon’s upcoming prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, is nearly upon us. There have been many contenders in the post-Game of Thrones fantasy show gold rush, but none quite as ambitious as Prime Video’s new series, which is estimated to cost a mind-boggling $468 million for the first season alone. By the time the show reaches the end of its planned five-season arc, it will almost certainly have cost more than $1 billion. It’s the most expensive TV show ever produced. Smaug could never.

But according to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, making The Rings of Power isn’t just about the money. “Middle-earth is such a beloved world, and telling the story of the forging of the Rings of Power is a privilege and a responsibility,” Bezos said in a statement provided to TIME. “I hope we do [J.R.R.] Tolkien’s work justice. It goes beyond making a commercially successful show. Everyone working on the show read these stories as kids and our hearts are in it.”

As hard as it is to believe that the head of one of the biggest corporation on Earth isn’t in it for the money, I kind of buy it, on some level, just a little. It’s borderline insane to spend this much on a TV show, so Bezos and company must have some kind of deeper connection to the material. Then again, given that Bezos’ net worth is valued at $168 billion and Amazon at $468 billion, it’s not like they don’t have money to burn.

Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, is a little more transparent. “The jewels of the crown are the big tentpole shows that invite in the whole family,” she said. “And this is the crown jewel.”

Creating The Rings of Power was like a “treasure hunt”

It’s impossible to make a show of this size without taking risks. Like Game of Thrones before it, The Rings of Power has two showrunners who are relative newcomers: JD Payne and Patrick McKay. And like with Thrones, they got the job in part because of their deep passion for the source material. Payne, for example, is fluent enough in Elvish that he opened the show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel with a short speech in Tolkien’s fictional language.

“Amazon is taking a humongous swing betting on us, who might not, from the outside, look like the safest bet,” McKay explained. “That’s good, I think. Storytelling is too safe these days.”

The fact that The Rings of Power is not based on an actual novel presented another challenge. “It’s based on the appendices which come at the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then also, poems and songs and stories and half whispered rumors and histories that are found scattered throughout the text,” Payne said during a Television Critics Association panel. “Tolkien is sort of a treasure hunt where there are some places where he’ll give little summaries and you’ll get bits, but often it’s a whispered thing that someone will say and a little nugget there, and a little nugget there.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video on September 2.

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h/t SyFy Wire