“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

The stakes are high for the Amazon Studios’ upcoming Lord of the Rings series. With a reported first season budget of $465 million, the series will become one of the most expensive shows ever made. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke said:

The market is crazy, as you saw with the Knives Out deal. [Netflix paid $469 million for two sequels.] This is a full season of a huge world-building show. The number is a sexy headline or a crazy headline that’s fun to click on, but that is really building the infrastructure of what will sustain the whole series. But it is a crazy world and various people on this Zoom, mostly Bela and me, have been in bidding situations where it starts to go incredibly high. There’s a lot of wooing and we have to make decisions on where we want to stretch and where we want to draw the line. As for how many people need to watch Lord of the Rings? A lot. (Laughs.) A giant, global audience needs to show up to it as appointment television, and we are pretty confident that that will happen.

The Lord of the Rings series is also reportedly set to feature sexually explicit scenes. Tolkien fans as well as Catholics are up in arms following rumors that the billion-dollar show could be rather raunchier than the source material. Tolkien site TheOneRing found a number of casting call and crew-member additions to the series, which, like Peter Jackson’s LOTR movies, is being filmed in New Zealand. Others found a casting call from Kiwi agency BGT, which is seeking ‘talent who are comfortable with partial or full nudity’ for background roles.

 TheOneRing also notes that the production has hired Jennifer Ward-Lealand, who is an experienced ‘intimacy co-ordinator’, who would be the liaison for any sex or nude scenes.

Catholic fans of the late author J.R.R. Tolkien are now taking action, petitioning against nudity in the forthcoming show. “They have hired ‘intimacy coaches’ and have asked that actors be comfortable with doing nude scenes in the castings,” warns a new petition on Change.org that has collected tens of thousands of signatures: 

Tolkien’s work is truly wholesome and packed with incredible Christian symbolism. He was a devout Catholic, and his memory does not need to be stained with gratuitous nudity or even nudity in the slightest. Tolkien’s creations have always been mostly FAMILY friendly… KEEP IT THAT WAY.

In October of last year The Independent reported that Lord of the Rings fans were “dismayed by rumors of ‘Game-of-Thrones-esque’ sex and nudity” in the Amazon TV adaptation. “J.R.R. Tolkien’s original fantasy books did not include any sexual content, and neither did the … film adaptations directed by Peter Jackson.”

Gary from Nerdrotic weighs in:

Meanwhile, TheOneRing is now pandering to the rainbow activists and labeling J.R.R. Tolkien as “woke”. *sigh*

Amazon has already given an early renewal to the series, which is still in production. If you’re interested, you can review the petition on Change.org.