Why Amazon is smart to spend an “insane” amount of money on a Lord of the Rings TV series

The Atlantic

“One might think that six Tolkien films and seven Game of Thrones seasons is fantasy overkill,” Derek Thompson says of the hundreds of millions Amazon is shelling out to bring the J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy book series to the small screen. “But the single most important media-industry lesson of the 21st century might be this: Overkill is underrated. Consider Disney’s endless Marvel franchise, which is now on its 17th(!) film. The franchise has earned $13.3 billion for the company and shows few signs of slowing down, relative to the competition. Two of the franchise’s most recent installments, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok, are respectively the second and fourth biggest opening weekends of 2017.”

ALSO:

• Amazon hasn’t called Peter Jackson: This might be because of the “frosty” relationship between Jackson and the Tolkien estate. But should Jackson have any involvement on the TV series?
• What might a TV version of Lord of the Rings look like?