Netflix’s massive Lord Of The Rings pitch apparently freaked out the Tolkien estate
Amazon ultimately won the rights, despite reportedly offering less money
Common sense would say that one of the reasons Amazon convinced J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate to let them make Rings Of Power was the outrageous amount of money that Prime Video was willing spend on it, but apparently the Tolkien estate has more willpower than… all of the bad guys in Tolkien’s stories. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s big piece on Rings Of Power showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay (during which they discussed the “patently evil” racist backlash), Netflix actually bid $250 million for the Lord Of The Rings rights but lost out to Amazon—despite Jeff Bezos’ company offering “tens of millions less” for the rights.
According to “one insider,” it was the vastness of Netflix’s pitch for Lord Of The Rings that turned off the Tolkien estate. They apparently wanted “several shows,” including “a Gandalf seres and an Aragorn drama” (we would’ve watched an Aragron comedy, for the record), with the insider referring to it as “the Marvel approach.”
It seems like an obvious move: Somebody comes to you with an opportunity to buy up the rights to a beloved franchise of some sort but needs you to pitch a good idea in order to get it, so you say “lots of little stories that combine into one big story like Marvel.” It worked for them and no one else, so why not try it out? Well, the Tolkien estate must have a good reason not to try it, because THR’s insider says they were “freaked out” by the idea.
Perhaps they were concerned about maintaining a consistent level of quality? We know that the estate has a lot of control over what Amazon can do with Rings Of Power, and maybe they thought it would spread the brand too thin if they were developing a lot of things all at once? They presumably wanted a new Lord Of The Rings, not a new… Book Of Boba Fett. But everything is working out just fine for everybody, with Rings Of Power being a certified hit and Netflix still having enough money to spend $30 million on each episode of Stranger Things.