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Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt the profits from that will help
by anshumankmr 4y ago
Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt the profits from that will help them earn money to cover up the remaining 300 million or so they have still invested.
And the "internet" really reacted negatively to the trailer as well.
(I personally didn't hate the trailer myself but after having watched the original trilogy and the first Hobbit movie, I was feeling a bit underwhelmed cause it didn't do a good job selling the show to me.) So it really remains to be seen whether it will be a hit when it does to go to streaming.
- oblio 4y ago> Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch? DVD Sales? Increasing sign ups to Prime? I have a doubt the profits from that will help them earn money to cover up the remaining 300 million or so they have still invested. Probably all of the above plus it's a long term move. Amazon needs to build up a strong catalog and marquee TV shows are long term attractions. As an example, Mad Men, especially because it's set in the 1960s will probably still be watched in the 2060s. Game of Thrones would have been the exact thing but D&D completely tore it apart in the last 2 seasons.
- anshumankmr 4y agoI don't know. 465 million seems still steep for 8 episodes TV show. I am all for it cause Disney has seemingly skimped on their CG budget for their newer shows. So more competition means more TV shows will have film quality production. But it is a concern, if their show costs more than something like Avengers: Endgame which had some of the biggest actors in Hollywood involved in addition to the probably insane VFX budget. Obviously COVID would have affected the budget for the show, but I have a feeling that it went way over budget than was initially intended. Although I agree with the marquee concept. HBO had their own marquee show: Game of Thrones, though it produced a lot of quality stuff like the Pacific, Band of Brothers, Sopranos etc that can be watched for years to come. Game of Thrones on the other hand was a big disappointment for the fans and its negative reception probably made HBO wonder what they would do after it was over (hence the Targaryen origin show and the Jon Snow series are being developed... personally I'm skipping both)
- svantana 4y agoPresumably some amount of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting is at play. Since New Zealand is footing a fixed percentage of the budget, it would only make sense to artificially inflate the costs.
- wodenokoto 4y agoPlease don’t use links as words. Links get abbreviated on hacker news. So “some amount of Wikipedia” doesn’t get any message across.
- jpgvm 4y agoLast 2 seasons of GoT still hurt to think about. It's not the ending that hurts it's how it got there. The last 2 seasons probably should have been 3 full seasons instead of the barely 1.5 we got and had a lot more build up/Dany descent into madness/Bran having some relevance that would justify his elevation to ruler, etc. The suddenness of everything, the exposition, everything was just poorly executed. Too much money spent on CG dragons, not enough money spent on episodes telling the story. The books can remedy my pain but have already waited so long. :(
- prepend 4y agoI think the last two could have been 10 seasons and it would have been bad. The issue wasn’t cramming too much material, the issue is they didn’t have writers with ideas. They had been adapting GRRM and ran out of material to adapt and just went batty. I think the reason it is so compressed is because they could just charge through it quickly and make it work.
- greedo 4y agoD&D were also trying to wrap it up quickly so they could move on to making the Star Wars series (that they subsequently got canned from).
- randomsearch 4y agoSpoiler! Maybe edit
- jffry 4y agoIs there a need to conceal spoilers from a massively popular show that aired its final seasons 5 and 3 years ago, respectively?
- ilikecakeandpie 4y agoIt's been over for three years now, one of those years where everyone was inside for a long time, and was very hotly debated on social media. I think it meets the criteria for not needing a spoiler warning
- moonchrome 4y ago>As an example, Mad Men, especially because it's set in the 1960s will probably still be watched in the 2060s. Why ? The only old TV shows I see being popular long term is era defining shows you watch for nostalgia (eg. Seinfeld, Friends). Maybe some real classics like Sopranos that everyone was watching at the time. Shows like Mad Men ? I really don't see it. And more importantly this LOTR show - how many people are even watching Game of Thrones now and how much interest will it generate in the future ? Unless this LOTR show is somehow groundbreaking with visuals (and it's a lot harder to do now then back when they did the films because the bar was so low back then) - I doubt it's a valuable long term play.
- imwillofficial 4y agoSeinfeld Is not just watch r for nostalgia, its still in syndication, and also has a massive overseas fan base. Mad Men is timeless in its lessons, novel in its execution, and holds a unique place in TV history. It’ll be watched for decades.
- treis 4y agoSeinfeld is the exception. Heres the top TV shows of 1993: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-rated_United_States_television_programs_of_1993%E2%80%9394 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-rated_United_States_tele... Seinfeld is the only one that people still watch.
- oblio 4y agoAll those shows are contemporary to the 90's. Seinfeld just has generic situational humor + great characters, and even Seinfeld will probably fade as its nostalgic watchers age and go away. It will just take 30-40 more years :-)
- wodenokoto 4y agoThere’s a lot of landline / phone booth / message machine based jokes and story lines. I don’t think 20 year olds will have an easy time picking up the show as they can’t relate to those problems. I think Seinfeld is very much riding the nostalgia train now. Mad men don’t assume any of its audience knew what the 60’s was like, so it has a chance of being more timeless.
- cs702 4y agoKeep in mind that Amazon needs to get only ~0.2M incremental Amazon Prime subscribers to recoup the investment. The lifetime value (LTV) of a Prime subscriber has been estimated at ~$2,300.[a] You can play around with the figure, but given that every LOTR fan is going to want to watch this series even if it sucks, I wouldn't be surprised is Amazon ends up getting far more than ~0.2M new Prime subscribers because of it. [a] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/21/whats-a-prime-member-worth-to-amazoncom.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/21/whats-a-pr... -- EDIT: Updated the figures to more accurate (based on LTV).
- darkerside 4y agoIsn't it more complicated than that? Many of those consumers already own Prime. How will this impact their desire to stay? Will people actually buy Prime for this and then keep it, or will they watch and then cancel?
- Victerius 4y agoYour analysis makes sense, but I was under the impression that RoP was a pure passion project from Jeff Bezos with no regard for the financials or for a return on investment.
- imwillofficial 4y agoBased on what, second or third hand sources? Jeff Bezos isn’t spending the money, Amazon is.
- jackosdev 4y agoI'm a fan, I've got Prime, and I'm not interested in the slightest, I'm done watching giant companies ruin good franchises and legacy characters. Would have to put a gun to my head to watch this one
- mmalachowski 4y agoIn Poland Amazon Prime is only 10 usd / year. So the math is much harder outside the US.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- both_cucumbers 4y agoAmazon Prime customers spend $1968 / year on average. $465M / $1968 = 236,280 For perspective, Disney Plus added 7.9 million users in just the first quarter of 2022.
- SilasX 4y agoThose revenues still have to cover the cost of buying the things they sell to prime members. It’s not pure profit.
- tgv 4y agoI pay $36/yr for Amazon prime. That's over 50x less. You'd need 13M new users who want to pay for just that, and nothing else.
- treis 4y agoYou're comparing profits with revenue and not accounting for risk.
- asciiresort 4y ago> Even with the rebate, how can they hope to recoup the investment? Merch Isn’t that why Disney acquired Star Wars and Marvel? Imagine an Amazon theme park alongside Universal Studios and Disneyland.
- anshumankmr 4y agoDisney got Star Wars for 4B, Star Wars merch is pretty much one of the most iconic and most sought out merch out there, the movies with some exceptions have been financial hits, they have had some good video games on console/PCs and they also have some mobile games that I believe would be raking in the sweet lootcrate money, the theme park attractions no doubt attract many, the Mandalorian was a critical and commercially sucessful show, and it seems despite the dip in quality in their other live action shows, the viewership has only increased. https://collider.com/obi-wan-kenobi-finale-audience-disney-plus/#:~:text=When%20Obi%2DWan%20Kenobi%20premiered,million%20to%20the%20top%20spot https://collider.com/obi-wan-kenobi-finale-audience-disney-p....
- giancarlostoro 4y agoI sure hope they don't mess it up. LOTR is an amazing series, it would be a shame for it to go the way of the Star Wars prequels and company.