The eye-popping Lord of the Rings price tag almost certainly doesn’t reflect season one’s production cost alone. The rights to the Tolkien property cost an estimated $250 million. Plus there are considerable startup costs when bringing Middle Earth to life — such as sets, costumes and props — that will be used throughout the series
For reference, all three films cost around $280 million in 2001, which adjusted for inflation is about $430M. This is a wild amount for one season.