Amazon's Middle-Earth 1st Season Costs More Than Trilogy

Amazon's Middle-Earth series (its not a Lord of the Rings series despite news reports unable to get that right) continues to film in New Zealand. Part of the decision to film there wasn't just because it was used for The Lord of the Rings trilogy whose look and feel will strongly influence the series, but also because of a subsidy that the country agreed to for them to film there.  Due to that, it means public disclosure.  

NZ Stuff news site is reporting that the cost of the first season of the Middle-Earth series is estimated to be $465 million (converted from kiki dollars) calculated from the $116 million subsidy paid to Amazon. This would likely make it the most expensive television season ever made. For comparison, the most expensive trilogy ever, The Hobbit, costs $623 million while the Lord of the Rings trilogy was $300 million. 

The assumption is the costs will dramatically go down for seasons that follow as a lot of it is startup costs due to getting such a large scale production going. Part of it essentially building a mini city to feed and house all involved in filming the series since a good chunk of cast and crew will come from around the world, not just pulled from New Zealand.  That is estimated to be 1,200 people directly and additional 700 indirectly (think vendors of supplies and the like). 

The series is aiming for a cinematic look, as a result its effectively like starting LOTR and Hobbit films from scratch all over again with likely the same scale of the two combined. Since its a fantasy realm, its means pretty much every location has to be built in some form or fashion. Add to that the cost costumes, weapons and a slew of other things. However, where those movie builds only had to last for at most a few months of filming at a location, I suspect all these build-outs have to be much more robust (and so more expensive) as they will be used repeatedly over potentially years of filming.

End result is it tells you that Amazon is not cutting any corners on this series and what we will get should, if the writing and acting is there, be something that will stand proudly with the Lord of the Rings trilogy and maybe surpass it.  Seasons 1 and 2 of the series is currently in production. There is no information number of episodes or when it will be released but at current pace it appears to be either late this year or sometime next year.