Amazon Prime’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” boasts the biggest budget of any TV series ever made, and part of that comes down to its cinematic ambitions.
The eight-episode first season utilised approximately 20 visual effects studios and around 1500 visual effects artists from around the world to pull off its visuals, including powerhouses like Industrial Light & Magic and Weta FX who were the first to sign onboard.
The result is a show that boasts close to 9500 effects shots, but more importantly, the CG is high quality enough to stand up to screening theatrically. VFX producer Ron Ames tells Variety:
“Our target was the 65-inch screen at home, but we made it so that it would play technically beautifully in everything up to an IMAX screen. It is finished to a theatrical resolution.”
Ames says the trick wasn’t finding people who could do the job, it was finding the right houses and artists who could work together cohesively.
In addition, they found a way that all assets could be shared and the studios could all talk to each other – thus, everyone “was working and pulling in the right direction.”
The details come as the series launched a few hours ago on the streamer. Whilst critical reviews have been very positive on the whole, with a near-unanimous appreciation of the production values, user reviews have been much more divided.
On Rotten Tomatoes the series is pulling an 84% score from critics, but only a 37% score from audiences. On Metacritic the scores are even more drastic with critics at 71/100 whilst users are at 1.1/10.
