The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a series based on the original The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, is set to hit Prime Video this year. With this release date fast approaching, excitement has been building, but with excitement also comes discourse. The argument has been made that too many pieces of media are not original because studios only want to put money into preexisting properties. One person who articulated this point was the legendary actor and Saruman's Lord of the Rings actor Christopher Lee. In 2004, Lee shared his thoughts on the subject with BBC News, and his views on new stories having to compete with familiar intellectual properties for financing weren't too far off from what can be seen today.
Christopher Lee was a talented and versatile actor with a diverse filmography, which included multiple roles in popular franchises. One of his earlier claims to fame was even his starring role as Dracula in multiple Hammer horror films. Modern audiences might also recognize him as Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels and as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. This impressive resume filled with iconic characters meant that Lee was very familiar with franchises and how studios treated them versus the treatment that a smaller film without a built-in fanbase might receive.
Amazon is surely using The Rings of Power to spark excitement and increase viewership on its Prime Video platform. With every studio seemingly having its own streaming service, there is more competition than ever for eyeballs. By using material that is already familiar to an audience, a studio has more confidence that a show or a movie will do well with their viewers and boost subscription numbers. This, unfortunately, means that there are fewer resources available for new creators with fresh ideas. Christoper Lee illustrated this point best when he said, "Trying to get finance for a really worthwhile story is excessively difficult." That's not to say that big-budget franchise media can't tell worthwhile stories, but it does mean that making a larger-scale original piece can sometimes feel close to impossible.
On the other hand, something like Rings of Power could cast lesser known actors because the studio doesn't have to worry about attaching a megastar to draw in viewers. This could allow someone to build a long-lasting career, much like what Christopher Lee was able to do with Dracula. He also mentioned, however, that even as a successful working actor, it was still difficult to get something made that wasn't a big-budget franchise film. Lee once stated, "Similarly today, what I get, are spin-offs of Lord of the Rings, spin-offs of Star Wars." This comment certainly did not mean that he was ashamed of his excellent work in these franchises, but it could be frustrating to not feel challenged as an actor.
While Christopher Lee could be memorialized through new Lord of the Rings material, his statements about the near impossibility of getting original material financed made 18 years ago still ring very true today. While the upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is expected to be the most expensive show ever made, Amazon Prime's hope is that this will bring a larger audience to their platform. At the end of the day, more subscribers mean more money, and more money hopefully means more of an opportunity to invest in new projects alongside the IP spin-offs.
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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres September 2 on Prime Video.