While introducing the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power at the show's U.K. premiere event, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thanked showrunners Patrick McKay and John D. Payne for choosing to sometimes ignore his input on the Prime Video series.
"Every showrunner's dream -- and I mean every showrunner -- their dream is to get notes on scripts and early cuts from the founder and executive chairman," Bezos joked, as reported by Variety. "They loved that." Bezos then thanked the pair for taking his notes (whether they implemented them or not), saying, "I need to thank you both for listening whenever it helped, but mostly I need to thank you for ignoring me at exactly the right times."
Bezos also expressed his appreciation that McKay and Payne didn't let him down after the studio took a gamble on them. "One of the best decisions we made was to bet on this relatively unknown team," he said. He revealed that there had been doubts about the decision, which involved putting an untested team in control of a Lord of the Rings series with a rumored budget of almost half a billion dollars. "Some people even questioned our choice," he said. "But we saw something special. J.D., Patrick, thank you for taking this on and putting your whole selves into it. Everybody here in this audience, you are all about to see that we made the right choice."
Jeff Bezos' Personal Connection to The Lord of the Rings
Aside from talking shop, Bezos touched on his personal investment in the series -- he was first introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien's books by his grandfather when he was a teenager and has loved them ever since. "I fell in love immediately -- I was probably 13 or 14 years old," he said. "I fell in love with the adventure of course, with the detailed universe, with the feelings of hope and optimism, with the idea that everybody has a role to play." Bezos also added that he had done the same for his own children, who are now Tolkien fans too.
Bezos previously mentioned his personal attachment to Tolkien's books, saying, "I hope we do Tolkien's work justice. It goes beyond making a commercially successful show. Everyone working on the show read these stories as kids, and our hearts are in it." McKay also expressed the same sentiment, saying, "[I]t's a story we're stewarding that was here before us and was waiting in those books to be on Earth."
The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere Sept. 1 on Prime Video.
Source: Variety