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When Amazon pursued the rights to a “Lord of the Rings” series in 2017, the company knew it would have to overcome some major obstacles to lure the . Tolkien estate to its video-streaming platform. Amazon was a relative newcomer in video, with no track record of shepherding a blockbuster series. HBO, meanwhile, could tout its long history of hits, most notably “Game of Thrones,” a similarly epic series based on fantasy novels with a rabid fan base. Netflix, with more than 100 million subscribers, pioneered the on-demand model with hits such as “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” And not to be ignored, Apple was also in on the negotiations to acquire the rights for the upcoming TV show, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon didn’t have much by way of Hollywood cred. What it had was the richest person on the planet in CEO Jeff Bezos, a big “Lord of the Rings” fan, who was promising the Amazon Studios team a huge budget to nab the series, a prequel to Tolkien’
