That Amazon was not going to skimp on costs with ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ is something we all knew. The investment is going to be huge, because just to get the rights they paid a whopping 250 million dollars. Of course, now I would like to highlight a fact that makes it clear that the ambition of the series I have led them to want to overcome the two trilogies located in Middle Earth directed by Peter Jackson.
Boundless visual ambition
J. D. Payneone of the showrunners of the Prime Video series, has confirmed that the first season of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ alone will feature more than 9,500 shots with retouching via VFX. An impressive figure in itself, but it is even more so if we take into account that the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy had only 2,800 -‘The Return of the King’ stands out above the rest with 1,500-, while that of ‘The Hobbit’ went up to 6,000.
That means that ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ will have more in a season -9,500 compared to 8,800- than six films whose duration in its version released in theaters is around 17 hours. In case that information seems little to you, let’s make a stop with ‘Game of Thrones’, well the first seven seasons of the HBO series had 13,250 shots with VFX. They are more than the 9,500 of the Amazon series, but is that we are comparing 10 episodes against 70. Surely ‘The house of the dragon’ has increased that average of almost 1,900 per episode, but also that it will have fallen far short of the Amazon series
Interestingly, the series has also promised to make extensive use of practical effects, so the visual ambition of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is clear. Also, Payne has promised that it is important.”try to outdo ourselves and do something crazier and more outrageous than what we or other people have ever done“. Therefore, it is possible that the 9,500 of the first season will end up being few compared to what will come later…