The rights alone were $250m just for the indices more or less. That’s why they have to do all this bullshit dancing around because they didn’t purchase the rights to a lot of actual LOTR writing.

It seems so rotten that any other studio is accuse of money laundering. But this is Amazon; they are just more or less incompetent with filmmaking. They fucked with WoT in much the same way.

Amazon thought they would try a new marketing tactic known as fan baiting to get contrarians consuming their show. It didn’t work, and Amazon is covering their tracks because they overcommitted to this nightmare.

I’m a firm believer in giving a show at least 3 episodes to unpack. I think Amazon wishes more people did thag because they are still hiding their viewership data while HBO acts with transparency and gloats.