Amazon spending $465m for first season of Lord Of The Rings?

In the last decade, the audiences have been treated to several big budget TV shows. Game of Thrones, spending over 15 million USD for each episode in its final season, perhaps tops the charts. However, Amazon's long-awaited Lord Of The Rings (LOTR) TV show might give Game of Thrones a run for its money.

A THR report, sourced from New Zealand's minister of Economic Development and Tourism, has revealed that Amazon is spending US $465 million on the first season of the LOTR show. The series is expected to run for five seasons, which easily puts the total at over a billion dollars.

If you're wondering how much money $465 million exactly is, let's put some facts in perspective. LOTR will obviously be competing with Game Of Thrones - both are TV adaptations of books and both have their own loyal fanbase. However, even the whopping amount of $15 million spent on each Game Of Thrones episode would not come close to the grandiose of Lord Of The Rings' budget. If the same budget was allocated to Game Of Thrones, fans would be watching an extra 31 episodes of the series.

Even for the LOTR movie trilogy, Peter Jackson spent only a total of $300 million. This included building elaborate sets of Middle Earth from scratch, extremely realistic make-up for all its characters, costumes that were designed to perfection and special effects that took months to complete. Thus, Amazon spending this colossal amount on the first season alone promises fans a LOTR experience like never before.

It could be possible that this figure of $465 million includes the $250 million Amazon spent on acquiring rights for the series from the Tolkien estate. Additionally, the government of New Zealand will be offering Amazon a tax break equal to more than $100 million in exchange for the massive tourism that the shooting of the series is going to bring in.