Amazon TV Trapped in ‘Lord of the Rings’ Nightmare, Exec Palace Intrigue
Peter Friedlander steps in to a ‘battered’ team, a star showrunner departure and an insanely high kill fee to the Tolkien estate
I cover TV from L.A. I scooped Vince Gilligan’s overall deal renewal with Sony TV and Julie Plec & Andre Agassi’s YA tennis drama in development at Amazon and spoke to ATX TV’s founders about buying their festival back from Penske. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
Amy Sherman-Palladino’s relationship with Amazon goes back to Prime Video’s Roy Price era and the early days of the tech giant’s entry into the scripted originals business. The creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel first signed with the streamer in late 2017, before that show launched and ultimately helped to define Amazon as a legit destination for prestige programming.
Now, as Amazon transitions into its Peter Friedlander era beginning Oct. 6, the creator of The Gilmore Girls — who saw her latest Amazon series, Étoile, unceremoniously un-renewed in June by a regime that has since seen its two top execs pushed out — has parted ways with the platform she once called the “future of television” in what I’m told was a mutual decision.
Sherman-Palladino was one of what sources tell me are multiple showrunners whose exclusive deals are also expiring this year. Friedlander, Amazon’s new head of global television, will need to dive right into the deep end to forge his own relationships with talent who have spent the past few years battered by indecision.
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A month removed from serving as head of U.S. and Canadian scripted series at Netflix where he was credited with hits including Outer Banks, The Queen’s Gambit and 3 Body Problem, Friedlander now takes over a slate that includes “Dad TV” staples Jack Ryan, Reacher and The Terminal List; young adult fare The Summer I Turned Pretty and We Were Liars; and such pricey genre plays as The Lord of the Rings and Fallout.
Along with the slate, Friedlander inherits an executive regime that’s spent much of the past six months reeling from the March exit of Jennifer Salke, with her top lieutenant, Vernon Sanders, now following her out the door. “Everyone at Amazon has been miserable,” one lit agent tells me. “People who haven’t left are like, ‘Welp, we have jobs.’ That’s the mentality.”
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Multiple sources all agreed that Friedlander will need to repair Amazon’s culture the same way Salke did after Price’s messy exit in 2017 all while stabilizing morale as much as possible for an executive team that has been reorganized more often than the Dodgers have won the National League West.
For today, I spoke with agents and execs familiar with Amazon’s business and culture to provide a cheat sheet for what Friedlander needs to prioritize — read on for key changes in decision-making, vibe and business structure that people inside and outside of the company are hoping he’ll make AND some exclusive information I have about the completion rate on season 2 of Lord of the Rings and the truly jaw-dropping kill fee to the Tolkien estate that makes potential cancellation of the series one of Friedlander’s toughest decisions.
Read on for:
My exclusive: New numbers on Lord of the Rings’ season 2 — plus the staggering exact dollar figure kill fee owed to the Tolkien estate if Amazon pulls the plug
The palace intrigue: Who really controls greenlights above Friedlander — and which lieutenants may not survive the shake-up coming
The chaotic Salke–Sanders playbook that paralyzed greenlights — and why it has to go
How Friedlander can rally — or completely remake — Amazon’s “battered and broken” TV teams
What top showrunners and agents say must change if Amazon wants to keep talent
Whether Friedlander can bring back an “appetite for risk” to a culture built on fear and indecision
The Big Question: Beyond “Dad TV” and YA hits, does Amazon even know what an Amazon show is?
Fix Internal Culture, ‘Streamline Bureaucracy’
Agents, showrunners and executives agree that Priority No. 1 for Friedlander is to repair Amazon’s internal culture. “Everyone is battered, broken and scared; there’s too much bureaucracy and nobody has an opinion,” says a source familiar with the inner workings at the streamer. What’s more, creatives have taken note of the culture, and many aren’t happy with the process of developing there. “The experience for talent needs to be better,” this same source adds.
Salke and Sanders were both prone to frequent staff reorganizations, which created a confusing and ever-changing structure that made it difficult for talent internally as well as outside sellers to know whom to pitch and go to for questions. What’s more, Sanders didn’t have centralized power as head of global TV to make decisions on his own, creating a logjam when it came to such things as new show pickups and renewals.
With YA drama We Were Liars, for example, Sanders wanted to greenlight the show for a second season after Salke left but had to get head of international Kelly Day and VP Prime Video Albert Cheng to sign off on it before then getting the blessing of Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. In another recent shake-up a couple of weeks before Sanders’ exit was announced, Cheng was shunted over to lead AI initiatives as Hopkins moved Jay Marine into a centralized role running all of the U.S. Prime Video business. One source notes that two weeks before the change was made, Cheng was still in the dark about it. “I get that an $80 million decision needs a process, but they have to be more streamlined,” says a veteran lit agent of the streamer’s top-heavy structure.
When Friedlander was at Netflix, he was known for empowering lower-level staff and being a “hall walker,” allowing any junior executive to seize the opportunity to sell him on a pitch they were excited about. With Friedlander’s blessing, they could communicate a “yes” that would increase their own clout and authority. At Amazon, meanwhile, Salke often needed to be in the room to close a deal. “It will be interesting to see if Peter gets more autonomy or has the strength of will to change the decision-making structure,” says the source familiar with Prime Video’s culture. “Part of the problem is you have people in midlevel jobs, and you can get someone to buy the pitch, and it doesn’t matter because the greenlight decision is four levels up and those people have no interaction or visibility with Hopkins.”
As with any regime change, Friedlander is expected to bring in his own people as multiple sources ponder whether Sanders’ longtime friend and head of U.S. co-productions Laura Lancaster as well as head of owned originals Nick Pepper will pass their new boss’ keeper test. “You have to streamline all these restructurings,” says a former Amazon exec. “When they let Jen go, Mike said it was under the story of creating a more streamlined management with less middlemen — and he hasn’t delivered on that yet, though the Marine move should be considered a start. Netflix’s structure is clean and lean and that’s something Peter can do: replace some of the lieutenants, bring in more talent and streamline the bureaucracy and bad groups they created.”
Sums up one seller with business at Amazon: “The structure at Amazon seemed like it changed every three months; there was no stability. Peter should instill that.”
Figure Out What Amazon Stands for
“Dad TV” and guy-with-a-gun shows are proven winners for Prime Video. Sanders also took multiple victory laps around the success of The Summer I Turned Pretty and doubled down on the platform’s young adult fare with season 2 of Liars and the upcoming high-profile adaptation of Rebecca Yarros’ romance/fantasy novel Fourth Wing. Then there are genre plays with Fallout, The Boys franchise and TV’s most expensive show ever, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (all of which were developed by Sharon Tal Yguado during her interim run post-Price).
So, what exactly is an Amazon show?
“They need a vision and point of view for what kinds of shows they want to make,” says the source with development at the streamer. “With the exception of Summer, their shows over the past year — Butterfly, Countdown, The Runarounds — all seem forgettable.”
Friedlander, the former Amazon exec says, needs to come up with a strategy and stick to it in order to provide a solid foundation for the platform as well as for the TV community as a whole. As with former Netflix exec Cindy Holland’s arrival at Paramount+, another buyer with a strong reputation and clear idea of what he wants will be good for the entire ecosystem.
“Amazon passed on Adolescence, and that was probably the right decision because they couldn’t have made that a hit — but why?” says the lit agent of Salke’s now-infamous pass. “They’re Amazon, they should be able to make anything a hit.”
With a reach of more than 200 million subscribers worldwide — including 130 million-plus U.S. ad-tier customers — Amazon has a global platform yet even its most successful programs fail to come close to any of Netflix’s most popular shows. Sources say Friedlander is currently getting up to speed on the business Amazon has before making any decisions on if the streamer will continue adding more “Dad TV” fare, though one rival exec says, “they’d be stupid not to stay in that lane, and they’re not stupid.”
“Amazon’s mentality is that only a certain type of programming will appeal to wide audiences and all these people buying toilet paper,” says the lit source. “The past couple of years have shown some of the biggest hit shows are not that at all: Adolescence, Severance, The Bear. These are not cookie-cutter, generic shows. I’m hoping Peter is going to change the way Amazon views development and looks at its own portfolio so it’s not just developing Summer, Reacher, dead body shows and giant video game titles and instead tries to make hits that don’t have a built-in audience before they’re even greenlit.”
With an executive regime looking for escape hatches, nobody is willing to take a risk on original ideas. “If people are trying to protect their jobs, there’s not a lot of reward in backing something you believe in,” says a former Amazon showrunner. “Having an appetite for risk and taking a swing at something, supporting and promoting it — even if people aren’t initially watching it, you have to keep believing in it.”
‘Cut the Fat’
The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cost north of $465 million, which doesn’t include the $250 million Prime Video spent on global rights to acquire the property or such additional costs as marketing and promotion. The freshman season was completed by only 37 percent of Prime Video viewers domestically and 45 percent overseas (with a 50 percent completion rate generally considered unspectacular at Amazon). Viewership for season 2 was down from season 1 though internal sources say of the subscribers who did watch, 10 percent more completed the season.
Episodes cost $20 million apiece in season 1 with the price tag having been dramatically reduced in seasons two and three, thanks in part to tax incentives and relocating the production out of New Zealand to Europe and other locations. Amazon’s initial deal called for a five-season, 50-episode commitment. The Tolkien estate is due a $20 million per season kill fee if Amazon fails to deliver on its original plan. (Season 3 is expected to complete production by year’s end; Amazon has yet to set a time frame for the show’s return.)
“They should cancel it and move on,” says the veteran lit agent, who maintains Amazon “wildly overpaid” for LOTR. “You’re a few executives removed from it now — who are you worried about embarrassing?” Adds the fellow lit source: “They need to find a way to make it come to an end. Nobody is thinking of Lord of the Rings when you talk about Amazon’s big hits. You’re thinking about Fallout, Reacher and Summer, all shows that cost significantly less.”
Beyond LOTR, Salke oversaw a free-spending era at Amazon in which the platform shelled out an estimated $20 billion on content in 2024 alone. The former Amazon exec says Salke’s “irresponsible financial development strategy” wound up restricting the platform and forcing executives to be more conservative. “All of their money is taken up with Lord of the Rings, and you’re left wondering if you’ll be able to get what you need in order to produce your show,” says one prolific showrunner who spent time on an Amazon production.
Several of Amazon’s scripted shows have been through development hell, with constantly changing creative mandates that have prompted execs to “treat showrunners like lightbulbs,” says another former Amazon showrunner. With A League of Their Own, for example, Amazon scrapped a full season of scripts written to make the show as a half-hour comedy when a decision was made late in the game to shift it to an hourlong drama. Multiple Amazon shows have seen the number of showrunners at the helm be greater than their number of seasons, largely because of a lack of clear vision of both what the show is and how it fits in at the platform.
“The first thing Peter can do is look at the slate, cut the fat and allow yourself to have a bigger budget and a focus for the team to look at the good stuff,” says the ex-staffer. “They have no budget right now to buy, and Peter needs to free that up and to come up with a sound and creative budget.”
One of Salke’s biggest blunders was the executive’s attempt at creating a global franchise from scratch with Citadel. The streamer has canceled both of its international spinoffs with the second season of the flagship series expected to come in 2026, some three years after its first six episodes launched. The Richard Madden-Priyanka Chopra starrer has a lackluster 52 percent score among critics and 62 percent rating with viewers on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Peter needs to distance himself from all this and come in and look at the slate to review what was ordered and what has merit,” says the former Amazon exec. Adds the veteran lit agent: “They have a ton of development there that’s not real and they have to use this opportunity to clear it out.”
Engage Seattle
After the Price era, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was very engaged in Prime Video and its attempt to find its own Game of Thrones. Bezos was so hands-on that he got personally involved in bringing The Expanse — allegedly one of his favorite books — to Amazon after NBCUniversal’s Syfy canceled the drama. Now, Friedlander is going to need to engage Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a similar way. “Jassy is a different person who is all about cuts and efficiencies — and it’s depressing to go to Seattle now,” says the former exec. “Peter bringing in a new strategy to Amazon and re-energizing Jassy as well as the whole [Culver City] lot is a big key.”
If Friedlander can corral Amazon’s budgets, that will ease his relationships with senior Amazon executives in Seattle who aren’t creatives and don’t care about awards or genre plays in the same way Bezos once did. “Peter needs to get them to be excited and let him run with it and out of this prison of constraints. That’s not how good content is made,” this source adds.
The streamer already has downgraded many of its once-exclusive overall deals in favor of more cost-effective first-look pacts for the likes of Fallout bosses Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan, Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s Donald Glover and Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge. One source says Waller-Bridge has gobbled up north of $120 million since signing with Amazon in 2019 while delivering nothing. (Her next project is a Tomb Raider series, which recently enlisted Chad Hodge as her co-showrunner.) Glover’s Smith co-creator/co-showrunner Francesca Sloane also moved from Amazon to HBO after Amazon attempted to dramatically reduce her fees.
Problems about, but many sources are optimistic that new leadership across Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios can bring new solutions. “Peter has a drastically different ethos than the previous regime,” says the young lit agent. Adds the source familiar with Amazon’s inner workings: “To have Peter running TV and Courtenay Valenti running film is great. Those are the best decisions Amazon has made in a while.”
Amazon is slow to greenlight, meddling from too many execs, and driven by metrics over loyalty to creative arcs. They’ve demonstrated a willingness to abandon even moderately successful shows (Wheel of Time, Night Sky, Paper Girls, Carnival Row). Fixing that means giving Friedlander permission to say “yes” before a show needs 14 layers of approval and a séance.