After spending 250 million to acquire the rights to produce the Middle-earth series, the e-commerce giant interviewed several leading filmmakers, including the Russo brothers, directors of Avengers: Endgame.

Many of them would go all the way to Mordor to do it, but the most expensive series of all time is created by two creators who have never worked in Hollywood before. Patrick McKay and JD Payne impressed the bosses of Amazon, who gave the series to … Frodo and Sam. Indeed, the two hit it off by saying they are so enamored with Tolkien’s novels that they identify with the two main characters in The Lord of the Rings.

The duo’s vision for the series, set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings and even before The Hobbit, coincidentally coincided with that of Simon Tolkien, JRR Tolkien’s grandson, overseeing his grandfather’s legacy. .

The young Tolkien was also impressed that Paine spoke the language of the elves and quoted the novelist during their first meetings. Having given his “blessing”, Amazon took a bold step.

Trusting McKay and Payne with a show that reportedly cost $715 million in its first season alone is seen as a big gamble. But many were eagerly waiting (25 million per release, an absolute record for Amazon) to see how they would unfold during the 50 hours of history that Peter Jackson masterfully compressed into a few minutes in the first film of his trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring .

After the first few episodes, shown weekly on Prime Video, the action drags, Forbes writes that the dialogue is surprisingly poorly written, and fans appreciate that Amazon, McKay and Payne sacrificed fidelity to Tolkien’s works in the name of racial political correctness and gender correctness.

Critics are happy, but audience ratings are disappointing compared to Amazon’s expectations: only 39% on the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 2.9/5 on Metacritic and a slightly more encouraging 6.9/10 on IMDb (although the latter belongs to Amazon).

Sources: CNBC, The Wall Street Journal