The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the new Tolkien-inspired TV series on Amazon Prime is already the most expensive television series in history.
Amazon paid $250 million up-front for the rights, and has reportedly committed a billion dollars to future production. The fact a business as canny as Amazon would commit that much money to develop the appendices of a novel — which is what The Rings is based on — shows just how much cultural heft Tolkien’s works continue to have. The wild success of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies is matched by the popularity of the books behind them.
Tolkien’s books and their adaptations have never attracted the scale of controversy that became attached to the Harry Potter saga, ever since J.K.Rowling broke with progressive orthodoxy on trans rights, or Game of Thrones, due to the sheer level of violence and misogyny portrayed.
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