Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power continues production without showrunners, writers amid strike
The road goes ever on and on, without the writers where it began
Aux News Showrunner
Following in the footsteps of House Of The Dragon, Prime Videos’ The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power will continue production throughout the writers’ strike sans showrunners or writers. Most visibly, the show’s co-creators, co-showrunners, and co-executive producers, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, will not oversee the show’s final 19 days of shooting. Amazon Studios confirmed to the A.V. Club that Rings Of Power’s creative materials were finished before the strike, so the actual production will not be affected. While Payne and McKay won’t be on set, the show’s “non-writing” executive producers, directors, and crew will oversee the remainder of the shoot.
This story is undoubtedly an easy layup for the show’s detractors (something like “they made it this far without writers,” etc.), but those who do enjoy the show are probably a little worried. Rings Of Power is already challenging to produce even before getting into the weeds of Tolkien’s legendarium. Throughout Rings Of Power’s promotional tour, the two showrunners were touted as Tolkien experts who could speak fluent Quenya from the Comic-Con stage. Will the show’s various “non-writer” filmmakers be able to step into that role?
Of course, the quality of one show matters much less than the wages of all the writers in show business. Any quality dips resulting from the writers’ strike aren’t anyone’s fault but the coalition of monopolistic, multi-billion dollar corporations depriving their workers of a living wage. Though it’s hard to imagine a fellowship of writers getting a fair deal out of Mordor’s leadership, that’s what it will take to hear more Harfoot walking songs.
It probably behooves Amazon to end the strike, so the company can get back to producing its ridiculously expensive series with the show’s leadership intact, but the company is famously not very union-friendly. Earlier this year, a judge found the company guilty of violating labor laws by threatening to withhold wages and promotions from employees who voted in favor of unionizing. One hopes the company learned its lessons, but as we know, the shadow of union busting endures, with its life force bound to the billions of dollars it avoids paying taxes on.
18 Comments
I’ve only heard praise for the no-expense-spared CGI on this series, not the writing. I’ve also heard that most people who started watching the series didn’t finish, but it’s a too-big-to-fail series and Amazon is lacking in hit shows so they proceed regardless. Continuing to shoot without showrunners is in keeping with that.
It’s… fine, if you turn off your critical faculties. It looks great, for sure. Narratively it’s kind of inept, almost hilariously so. But you’re also not really missing a valuable experience if you don’t watch it.
If it was no expense spared, then they wasted a lot of money. The effects mostly don’t look that great – they’re fine at best (aside from the handful of scenes in Valinor), and kind of inept at worst. It looks worse than House of the Dragon with a bigger budget. Also, both it and the Wheel of Time seem to have cut corners on costuming. Some weird Amazon production quirk.
this show’s budget is less than a drop in the bucket for them. Fuck Amazon.
Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power continues production without showrunners, writers amid strike…and ends up being the greatest television season ever. lol.
season 2 will probably see a boost in quality with those two JJ stooges keeping their opinions to themselves for a while
Bilbo Scabbins
Bilbo’s other nephew: Scabbo Baggins
Lowest little hobbit of them all.
VERY CLEVER JOKE ABOUT SHOW QUALITY LOL I AM SMART
I just read that if the strike lasts 6-8 weeks the companies can back out of the mega deals they have with people like JJ Abrams which in his case and many others aren’t producing many shows so for that reason alone I think it’s gonna be awhile before this is settled.
I predict it will be settled before the actors’ contract expires at the end of June, but I’m terrible at predicting things.
It should be interesting to see. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get delayed and have to do reshoots and such after the strike is over, since the show is very serialized. A very episodic show could probably get by without the active hand of the showrunners, but this will be more challenged.
Wow, totally not surprised.
Amazon has no reason and doesn’t care about the WGA strike. “Rings of Power” and other things Amazon puts in their platform are just write offs on the expense sheet. What Amazon cares about is that you continue to order groceries and your impulse buy of a shirt, or some Legos. Even then all they really care about is that a lot of companies now depend on Amazon Web Services. Delayed writing for Prime Video doesn’t concern them, and they are happy to let the studios negotiate the end terms.
Considering there’s only 19 days of shooting left, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is mostly pickups and second unit stuff, which I’m sure the non-writing producers and directors are more than capable of handling.
If this was half-way through shooting, it might be cause for concern but, honestly, I think it makes sense for the production team to just finish off what they had already planned to shoot rather than shut down production for who knows how long. It’s not like they’re writing the scripts on the day, though the middling quality of Season 1 may say otherwise.
Rings of Power had writers? Could have fooled me!
Sure why would a franchise that lives or dies on its writing need writers or directors