Two first-time showrunners who landed TV’s biggest series give THR a behind-the-scenes tour as they navigate challenges even scarier than Mordor — from "patently evil" online trolling to massive industry expectations.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Some classic lines in here and great insight into why RoP has been such an epic disaster.
“It was our collective passion and fidelity to Tolkien that really won the day,” says Amazon Studios TV co-head Vernon Sanders
Jesus Christ, they have thrown the Lore and the Legendarium onto the fire, cast aside Tolkien's themes and values, and written their own "story" full of on-the-nose modern politcal allegory, which Tolkien despised in fantasy story-telling...
They moved to Los Angeles and spent years toiling in the screenwriting game without a big win. Their previous gig was at Bad Robot, where they punched up scripts and developed several projects, such as an abandoned Star Trek movie. “We had reached a point — we’d been writing movies for 10 years that should have gotten made,” McKay says. “Movies where the director was right, the cast was right, the script was right, the title was right and it was a big IP...
Says it all really, dumb and dumberer 2.0, 10 years of fail, never written a thing, and came from Bad Reboot...
At one point, Payne and McKay asked mentor and former boss J.J. Abrams to call Amazon to put in a good word, and he did. “We feel like that moved the needle,” says McKay.
OMG say no more, JJ got involved! LMAO. Like that should be a glowing reccomendation to adapt JRR Tolkien, "yeah it's Jar Jar Abrams here, I think you should let these two clowns with no resume loose with a billion dollars, what could go wrong?"
Yet the deciding factor was their fleshed-out story and passion for, and depth of knowledge of, Tolkien’s world. Amazon’s programming team kept coming back to the same conclusion: The guys with perhaps the least experience were also the best choice.
“Hearing them bounce back and forth, they had such a deep connection to the material that was there from the beginning,” Salke says. “There was no education you could do for that; it was their natural organic interest.”
McKay says dryly, “I imagine it was very scary for them.”
And the results have been terrifying for the fans too! Yes, giving people with the least experience the job is a generally well-followed business practice. A deep connection that they completely forgot the moment amazon gave them a call it seems...
“The entire making of this show has been a massive learning experience for everyone involved. We had no idea what we were getting into. No one else did, either.”
And it shows, clearly had no idea what you were doing and were totally out of your depth.
“One of the big things we learned was even when it’s a small scene, it always has to tie back into the larger stakes,” Payne says.
So you didn't even understand the basics of screenwriting then?
And that's just the first half of the article!!! Damned out of your own mouths there boys!
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