Amazon has not been as prolific as Netflix in generating scripted programming for its Prime Video service, but it has been one of the more active streamers in original content over the past ten years or so. With high-profile shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Boys, and The Wheel of Time along with non-genre entries like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Jack Ryan, and Transparent, it has definitely made a mark in the streaming landscape. But to stay competitive, it has been pumping a lot of money into its productions and that is certainly impacting the bottom line. As we approach the point of the bubble bursting, has Amazon’s spending brought Prime Video to the point that it will no longer be sustainable with its current model?
Big Spending and Big Risks
The first sci fi scripted original to appear on Amazon (apart from a few pilots that did not go to series) was 2015’s The Man in the High Castle. It set the standard of high production values among genre entries, and that has continued for most of Amazon’s originals (including non-genre shows). Like Netflix, the streamer wanted its shows to stand out in an increasingly crowded market, and to do so it opened up the wallet. Other notable high-budget productions that would follow include The Expanse (the final three seasons after Amazon picked it up from Syfy), Carnival Row, The Boys, The Wheel of Time, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
But now Amazon is at the point that the money it has spent on content has far surpassed the return on investment from subscriptions. The streamer allegedly shelled out one billion dollars to acquire the rights to The Lord of the Rings and to produce the first season of The Rings of Power. Even if that had a theatrical release, it would be very difficult to recoup those expenses. And while that property brings plenty of name recognition, Amazon has to have known that it would keep them in the red for a long time. If that had been their one big-ticket item and other originals were more economical, perhaps the attempt to attract attention by landing a well-known property would have worked. But they keep shelling out lots of money on other shows and that will eventually take its toll.
The company made a big-dollar development deal with Westworld‘s Christopher Nolan and Lisa Joy which delivered The Peripheral in late 2022. But that show was very expensive to produce (allegedly $175 million for the eight-episode first season) and it did not bring enough viewership to the service to justify the cost. It had received a second-season renewal, but Amazon just recently used the strikes as an excuse to reverse its decision. Another recent high-cost show is the spy fi entry Citadel which is said to have run up a bill of $300 million for its six-episode first season. It did perform well in international viewing, but it only scraped the bottom of the Nielsen charts for one week based on viewership in the states. Amazon is a big company and it can hide some of these expenses across its many ledgers for a while, but it can only get away with that for so long.
Where Is Prime Video Headed?
Like all of the companies putting our original content these days, both digital or linear, Amazon can only go so far at its current spending levels. It is pumping billions of dollars a year into content, and it is just not realistic to expect subscriptions to cover that. The streamer appears to be locked into the Lord of the Rings franchise for a few more years even though initial feedback on the first season of The Rings of Power was mixed (I rather liked the show). It also has major franchises like The Wheel of Time and The Boys ongoing, and those certainly have a hefty price tag as well.
The streamer has pulled the plug on some of its new shows just recently like The Paper Girls and Night Sky, and The Power could be on the way out as well. In addition, the writers’ and actors’ strikes have brought everything to a halt and could lead to more cancellations as we saw with The Peripheral. Amazon might also use the labor movements to back out of the development deals with people like Nolan and Joy similar to what Warner Bros. TV did just recently. I also expect to see fewer development announcements, even after the strikes are resolved, and less in the way of big-budget productions. I don’t believe that Amazon will completely back away from original content, and the streamer should continue to favor genre entries because it has done well with those. But I believe we will see less high-profile shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and more reasonably priced entries like The Rig. Plus, the streamer might strike up a deal with one or more of the linear networks to share content and costs (more on that in an upcoming post).
A Look at Amazon’s Recent Sci Fi and Fantasy Shows
Prime Video has released a fair number of genre entries over the past five years with twenty-four total coming out since the 2018-19 season. And while several of those have been cut short, the streamer only has a 35% cancellation rate after one season and 44% after two over that time period. Those numbers are not bad compared to other streamers and the linear networks, though fans of Paper Girls, Carnival Row, Night Sky, and Truth Seekers might disagree. Below is the list of all the sci fi and fantasy shows put out by Prime Video since the 2018-19 season.
| Series | Start | Seasons | Cancelled/Ended |
| Blade of the Immortal | 2019-20 | 1 | Y |
| The Boys | 2018-19 | 4 | N |
| The Boys Presents: Diabolical (Mini-Series) | 2021-22 | 1 | Y |
| Carnival Row | 2019-20 | 2 | Y |
| Citadel | 2022-23 | 2 | N |
| The Expanse | 2019-20 | 3 | Y |
| The Feed | 2019-20 | 1 | Y |
| Good Omens | 2018-19 | 2 | N |
| Invincible | 2020-21 | 2 | N |
| The Legend of Vox Machina | 2021-22 | 2 | N |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power | 2022-23 | 2 | N |
| Night Sky | 2021-22 | 1 | Y |
| Outer Range | 2021-22 | 2 | N |
| Paper Girls | 2021-22 | 1 | Y |
| The Power | 2022-23 | 1 | N |
| The Rig | 2022-23 | 2 | N |
| Solos | 2020-21 | 1 | Y |
| Tales from the Loop | 2019-20 | 1 | Y |
| Them | 2020-21 | 2 | N |
| Truth Seekers | 2020-21 | 1 | Y |
| Undone | 2019-20 | 2 | Y |
| Upload | 2019-20 | 3 | N |
| Utopia | 2020-21 | 1 | Y |
| The Wheel of Time | 2021-22 | 2 | N |
Be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates. And for the latest news and discussions on sci fi and fantasy television, follow r/SciFiTV
Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
Given the amount of money spent on the LoTR show I don’t think it can be considered anything more than an abysmal failure. I have Prime and won’t even bother with it on recommendation of various friends – same with wheel of time. Hollywooders (including the streamers as an incestuous big tech cousin) are trend chasers. They’re all clearly after some sort of “Game of Thrones” killer long after that moment has passed. If you look at Prime now, there’s virtually nothing avaialble compared to a few years ago – it’s all moved to freevee for the ad money. It all sort of feels like the shift that happened years ago from a largely free internet to a corporate BS dominated internet – what a shame.
Despite its flaws, I thought that Season 1 of LOTR: The Rings of Power was decent and I am looking forward to the second season. The Wheel of Time was good as well and I will be watching S2 of that one as well.
It’s my personal belief the reason why the 6th and final (for now?) season of “The Expanse” was given a shorten season — only *6* episodes instead of the 10 in each of the previous two seasons at Amazon — was because of the extremely amount of money Amazon spent on the rights to “The Lord of the Rings” — $250 million dollars! — and then they spend nearly $500 million(!) in producing the first season of “The Rings of Power.”
In my opinion, that series was “just okay,” certainly NOT worth the money that was spent on it, and certainly NOT up to the quality of production and story-telling of “The Expanse.”
(At least “The Expanse” managed to slip in almost another 1/2 hour of content with it 5-part “One Ship” mini-episodes.)
I also suspect the money Amazon spent on “TLoTR” was part of the reason the excellent science fiction series “The Peripheral’s” second season was “unrenewed.” That show had great promise.
Amazon has wasted a LOT of money on Tolkien. According to one source, less than 1/2 of the those who started watching “The Rings of Power” *finished* watching the season — and it was only *7* episodes long!
( https://mobilesyrup.com/2023/04/04/amazon-the-rings-of-power-viewership-data-report/ )
I think Amazon Video has seriously screwed itself over with many of its decisions in the last 2-4 years.
Which is depressing, because what they had produced previously was on-the-whole excellent.
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Their overspending will certainly take its toll at some point. It is very possible that they cut short the number of eps in the 6th season of The Expanse in order to free up money for LOTR which would be sad considering how good that show was.