Another critic, Guy Lodge, called it “a massive shock”, adding: “She’s so witty and deadpan and clockwork-precise in Triangle of Sadness, and I was so excited to see a new South African talent on the international scene.”

Markella Kavenagh’s experience on the set of Rings of Power was unlike anything she says she’d worked on before. For an adaptation based on the fantasy mythos of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Australian actor — who plays the hobbit Elanor (Nori) Brandyfoot in the series — expected lots of studio work, CGI and green screens.

Instead, what is reportedly the most expensive TV series ever made did what it intended to do — pulled out all the stops.

“They kind of built the foundation literally in the groundwork for us,” Kavenagh told CBC News of the massive on-location construction done for the Amazon Prime Video show, which premiered Friday.

“They built all of these sets for us. They made them as real as possible, and we were able to just go in and just react to that, really.”

WATCH | Markella Kavenagh hints at Rings of Power’s big-budget scope: Amazon Studio’s Rings of Power may soon cost over $1 billion US. Star Markella Kavenah says that cost translated to larger-than-life sets. 

Massive budgets changing the landscape

That level of production is hardly surprising; it’s just another massive-budget series among a sea of others, which are slowly but surely changing both the TV and cinema landscape. 

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a noted Tolkien fan, had his company acquire the rights to Lord of the Rings‘ appendices for a reported $250 million US. The appendices are additional information Tolkien included at the end of his books, and because of that Amazon does not even have the ability to include information from the books’ main story or its prequels like The Hobbit.

And with the first season of a five-season run costing an estimated $465 million US (subsequent seasons, though still wildly expensive, could require slightly reduced budgets as producers will be able to use existing construction and costumes), Rings of Power may conservatively cost the studio in excess of $1 billion US. 

While that would put it in league with the most expensive series out there, it’s far from alone. According to Variety, Game of Thrones cost HBO roughly $100 million per season over its eight seasons between 2011 and 2019. Netflix’s first two seasons of royal drama The Crown cost around $130 million, which according to the BBC, is comparable to the actual cost of the Royal Family for the British government. 

Similarly, Netflix’s Stranger Things fourth season cost a whopping $40 million per episode over its nine episodes. HBO Max’s House of the Dragon, which debuted only a week before Rings of Power, was a comparatively cheap $200 million according to Variety — a similar, though slightly lower, figure to the Alberta-shot series The Last of Us. 

There’s also Disney+’s WandaVision, Apple TV’s See and another upcoming Amazon production, Citadel. That project, from Captain America and Avengers directors the Russo Brothers, has a budget that’s reportedly ballooning to over $200 million for just seven episodes — the second-most expensive show ever made, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

New era for TV

While the TV industry has always been a big business, single-season budgets that dwarf Hollywood Blockbusters (for comparison, the budgets for both Top Gun: Maverick and The Batman were just shy of $200 million) did not used to be the norm. 

And screenwriter and University of Georgia film and TV professor Neil Landau explained it’s not only the money invested in these shows that’s changed, but the way production companies — and most importantly, streamers — view them.

As far back as 2010, outlets like the New York Times, Vulture, the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair were noting the rising quality of TV shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire and Mad Men over film.

But where they were primarily cable TV shows that were unique among the mostly close-ended series, that’s no longer the case. Vast, serialized and cinematic shows are becoming the norm for production companies and show writers, who are starting to see television as an entirely new genre. 

“They call themselves filmmakers,” Landau said. “They’re shooting a feature film every week. You know, they’re not following the formula or a template. It’s extremely cinematic television for writers.”

That, Landau said, has come from the move from network and cable TV to streamers — who don’t require ad breaks or strict time blocks that often led to necessarily formulaic stories. They also don’t have the same risk of channel surfers leaving after the first minutes of an episode — allowing them to write more cinematic stories, since streaming services know audiences are likely to stay within their ecosystem whether or not they like a particular show. 

But as streaming became the dominant way audiences consume media, the field crowded. Since Netflix used to be the only option for most looking to stream content, studios would license their content to be hosted there. 

“That’s not true anymore,” Landau said, noting how studios like Disney, Apple and HBO have all opted to make their own platforms instead of looking to Netflix. “[Audiences are] across all the platforms. So now it’s like, who’s going to make the most noise to actually get eyeballs to pay attention when there are over 500 choices?”

WATCH | ‘Epic’ Rings of Power series takes Lord of the Rings fans thousands of years into the past: Amazon spent a reported $1 billion US making the first season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a series CBC’s Eli Glasner calls ‘epic and elemental. An amazing start.’

How to ‘cut through the clutter of the streaming wars’

Matthew Belloni, former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and founding partner of media news outlet Puck, says that’s driving studios and streamers to spend big on tentpole series. The name of the game is having something notable enough to bring audiences into the ecosystem. 

And for Amazon particularly, Belloni said, actually making money on Rings of Power or any other series is mostly an afterthought. Bezos (who famously quipped in 2016 that when Amazon wins a Golden Globe, “it helps us sell more shoes”) has a company that is far more than a streaming service. It — and the vast majority of other streaming services, which are mostly offshoots from more diversified companies — doesn’t need to make a profit on its shows. 

That’s what has allowed Amazon to spend as much as it has on Rings of Power, and motivated an advertising campaign that Belloni compared to “a traditional movie-style press rollout on steroids.”

As long as Rings of Power captures attention — either through cinematic storytelling, or simple curiosity about its high price tag — it will have done its job. And, according to Belloni, it seems to be working. 

“The success of this show will validate the strategy of going big,” Belloni said. “And …  if anything, everybody else is learning from HBO Max’s experience with Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, that this is the way to go. That these big, big projects that are getting media coverage like this is the way to cut through the clutter of the streaming wars.”

Canadian, indie film at risk of being overwhelmed

But Toronto film and TV producer Marina Cordoni says that success comes at a price for film — especially Canadian film.

During pandemic closures, and even after, theatres have struggled to survive and eke out a profit. That’s made it immeasurably harder for films to earn a profit. And though Blockbusters can weather the storm and still manage to pull in an audience, Cordoni said it makes it virtually impossible for indie films to find their audience. 

At the same time, people’s tendency to stay home to watch shows has led to the proliferation of long, cinematic-style series mainly from America — largely at the expense of homegrown film.

“All I’m hearing from the networks being the traditional ones and or the streamers, is that they’re moving away from film and concentrating on series,” she said. “Streamers have a monopoly on the audience now because people don’t need to leave their homes.”

If that continues, she said, it could have serious consequences for film.

“Otherwise,” she said, “I believe, we’ll lose it and we’ll lose our place in the world, in a sense, on the world stage.”

WATCH | Amazon’s billion-dollar bet to hold on to subscribers: E-commerce giant Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings show is a billion dollar bet aimed at holding onto subscribers in an increasingly competitive streaming service environment.

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What does the resolution say?

Flagging the issue of unemployment, it asked for society to come forward and participate in building an Atmanirbhar Bharat where the economic model is based on Indian values.

“Thrust must be given to Bharatiya economic model that is human-centric, labour intensive, eco-friendly and lays stress on decentralisation and equitable distribution of benefits and augments village economy, microscale, small scale and agro-based industries,” the resolution said.

The resolution underlined thrust areas as rural employability, unorganised sector employment and employment of women as solutions to unemployment. “Efforts are essential to adopt new technologies and soft skills appropriate to our societal conditions,” it said.

It highlighted the decline of the manufacturing sector, and said boosting it could generate a lot of employment. It also urged the youth to come out of the mentality of seeking only jobs.

“An environment conducive to encouraging entrepreneurship should be created by educating and counselling people, especially youth, so that they can come out of the mentality of seeking only jobs. Similar entrepreneurial spirit also needs to be fostered among women, village folks and people from remote and tribal areas,” it said.

Why the resolution?

It comes at a time when India’s unemployment rate has been rising, and when the effects of demonetisation and the pandemic have hit the economy and dried up opportunities.

According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data, the unemployment rate went up to 7.91% in December 2021 from 6.3% in 2018-19 and 4.7% in 2017-18. In urban areas, this has gone up to 9.30% in December 2021 from 8.09% in January 2021, and in rural areas, to 7.28% from 5.81%. The manufacturing sector is said to have lost 9.8 million jobs between 2019-20 and December 2021.

The issue has brought the government under attack from the Opposition and now the RSS believes it has to be addressed through a concerted effort. In fact, according to Sangh sources, six organisations affiliated to the RSS that work in the field of economy had a three-day brainstorming session last month on the state of the Indian economy.

“The issue that came out for coordination was employment generation. We agreed that it was easy to abuse the government. But without harnessing the strength of the society, it was not possible to generate employment. If governments could end unemployment, there would be none anywhere. And so a campaign by the name of Swavalambi Bharat Abhiyan was launched,” said Ashwani Mahajan, National Co-Convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch.

According to Mahajan, the Abhiyan is an attempt to decentralise employment generation and take it to the grassroots level so that all the employment is not concentrated in a few cities.“The resolution encapsulates this idea. The entrepreneurship of our youth is our strength. So why should we think that employment should be only through jobs. This thought of 60-70 years has to change,” Mahajan said.

How will it be implemented?

The RSS aims to implement it by pushing the government to support small and medium enterprises in the manufacturing sector and by working with the youth at the grassroots to “help them engage into entrepreneurial ventures through agri-allied activities and other self-employment opportunities”.

“Our manufacturing used to be 17-18% of the GDP, now it has reduced to 15%. Markets of API, electronics, cycle, toys, all were eaten away by China. Because of the pandemic there is a change in the mindset of the government. Dependence on China is being increasingly minimised. Government has done a lot to boost manufacturing through various ways, including tariff barriers. Now the society too has to rise to the occasion,” Mahajan said.

According to Sangh sources, there are ample opportunities for creation of jobs in rural India through industrialisation, food processing, agri-allied activities such as animal husbandry, bamboo farming, pisciculture etc. “Government can’t achieve this alone. Society has to come forward. Who will organise them? We have taken the responsibility. The ABVP too has been roped in,” an RSS leader said.

According to Mahajan, the Sangh is pushing the idea that only an employment-based growth model is a good model and Atmanirbhar Bharat cannot alone achieve it. “In all of this, if we see any policy of the government is not fitting in, we will tell the government as well,” Mahajan said.

Is it the first time RSS has taken up the issue?

The RSS has always believed that the governments must follow economic models that are seeped in Indian values and take into account India’s social structure and rural life. Some of its most prominent leaders, such as Dattopant Thengadi, consistently articulated a labour-intensive Swadeshi model as being the best suited for the Indian economy. Following the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990s, the RSS has vociferously rooted for this model.

In 1992, as the Indian economy opened, the ABPS had passed a resolution on “Swadeshi” and “Unemployment”. It said, “The near total dependence on others leading to growing economic slavery and massive unemployment, too, can be directly traced to attempts at fashioning our economic development after a hybrid Soviet-Western model based on capital intensive and labour-displacing technology, completely ignoring the genius, our life values, the present conditions and needs and future aspirations of our people.”

This Labor Day weekend promises a bounty of new movies and shows to watch on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu and all the major streaming services. 

This weekend’s lineup is led by the big behemoth that is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The highly-anticipated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work is a prequel that takes place several millennia before the events of the Blockbuster movies. But the action features a few familiar characters, like elves Galadriel and Elrond.

“Metalocalypse” co-creator Brendon Small has offered an update on the upcoming original movie based on the hit original series. The movie will be released globally on Blu-ray/dvd and on digital transactional video on demand (TVOD) and electronic sell through (EST) for a 90-day exclusive window, followed by premieres on HBO Max and Adult Swim.

Speaking to Sara Parker of the 93.3 WMMR radio station in Philadelphia, Small stated about the film: “I can tell you… what has already been released, which is that we are making a feature ‘Metalocalypse’ movie, and that’s what we’re in production on right now. So we’re right in the middle of making the movie, so all the questions that were still lingering after ‘The Doomstar Requiem’ — a one-hour long rock opera special — are being answered… I don’t wanna say too much about it, but it’s a very big project. We’re all excited to be knee deep in it right now.”

When pressed for a release date, he commented with a smile: “That will be up to [Adult Swim] to discern. I just know that I’ve still got work to do.”

“Metalocalypse” was one of the first original productions to air on Adult Swim. “Metalocalypse” first aired on Adult Swim in 2003 and ran for four seasons, ending with the half-hour special “The Doomstar Requeim” in 2013. During its run, Small also produced four albums by the show’s fictional band DETHKLOK, which have sold one million album-equivalents. “The Dethalbum” was released in September 2007 and debuted at No. 21 on the Billboard 200 chart.

“Metalocalypse” movie synopsis: “The power-hungry Tribunal unveils their secret and deadly ‘Falconback Project’ as the world grows in embattled chaos and the menacing Doomstar breaches the Earth’s atmosphere while the mysterious and twisted dissent of a band member threatens the future of DETHKLOK. Picking up directly after the heroic rescue of Toki Wartooth: Can DETHKLOK choose between their egos and the greater good of the world to embark on a gauntlet of dangers that will try their very souls and finally write the song that will be their salvation?”

The new movie is created by Small and Tommy Blancha. The movie soundtrack will be released on WaterTower Music.

As previously reported, DETHKLOK will co-headline the 2022 Adult Swim Festival Block Party, set to take place August 5-7 across four venues — The Fillmore, The Foundry, Punch Line and Brooklyn Bowl — in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. DETHKLOK will play on August 7 at The Fillmore. Also scheduled to headline the event are RUN THE JEWELS (August 5 at The Fillmore) and TIERRA WHACK (August 6 at The Fillmore). In addition to music, there will be “live panels, exclusive premieres, watch parties, games, giveaways, and merch.”

DETHKLOK last performed in November 2019 as part of the Adult Swim Festival at the Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles. The show marked DETHKLOK‘s first live appearance since taking part in the 2014 edition of Festival Supreme in L.A. DETHKLOK played a 19-song set that included live premieres of the tracks “Impeach God” and “Comet Song”. Joining mainman Small (guitar, vocals) at the gig were Gene Hoglan on drums, Nili Brosh on second guitar and Pete Griffin on bass.

Adult Swim, launched in 2001, is WarnerMedia‘s No. 1 brand for young adults offering original and acquired animated and live-action series. Airing nightly from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. (ET/PT) on its linear channel, and also available through HBO Max, Adult Swim is basic cable’s No. 1 network with persons 18-34 and 18-49, and is seen in 94 million U.S. home, reaching over 40 million viewers via HBO Max.