Ever since Game of Thrones became one of the biggest and most popular TV shows of the modern era, every network or streaming service under the sun has plunged a handful of big budget fantasy shows into development in an effort to try and recapture at least some of that magic.
While many of them have failed spectacularly and gone down in the history books as of colossal flops, Amazon has two marquee properties that are destined for long term success. The Wheel of Time is one of the streamer’s most popular original shows ever, which is just as well when Season 2 started filming four months before the first episode had even aired.
On top of that, there is of course The Lord of the Rings, the half-billion venture into Middle-Earth that finally arrives in September 2022. In an effort to not cannibalize its own audience, Amazon’s head of global TV Vernon Sanders admitted to TV Line that the company doesn’t want to overstuff the roster in an attempt to avoid the slate of top titles impacting each other’s viewership.
“We are going to be really thoughtful about how we release these shows. In our minds, they are very different shows, but we are cognizant of our genre fans, and we are excited about the collection of content we have — those two, along with The Expanse and The Boys, Carnival Row is coming back, we have a fantastic show with [Westworld creators] Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy called The Peripheral…. We are very excited about the future.”
The Lord of the Rings is going to come packing a deafening level of buzz, while The Wheel of Time has cultivated a sizeable fanbase already, so Amazon won’t even consider having them to step on each other’s toes schedule-wise, which is a safe and sensible call.
