Amazon Prime isn’t just life-changing because you can have all kinds of stuff delivered to your doorstep within 24 hours, it also allows you to stream TV shows and movies on demand.
Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service has also been working on plenty of great, original content over the past few years, giving much of its licensed programming a run for its money and rivaling Netflix in the bid to be the top streaming service to rule them all.
With that in mind, let's take a good look at what’s definitely on the cards over the next few months, as well as some of the latest speculations about the original content that will be on the way in the not-so-distant future, from a refresh of Conan The Barbarian, through to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s highly-anticipated Good Omens.
The Romanoffs
Matthew Weiner, the creator of hit TV show Mad Men, is following up the huge, huge success of his adland drama with The Romanoffs. Very few details have been released about the upcoming TV series, but it's a modern day anthology that'll follow the lives of people who think they're descended from the Romanov family.
Sounds mysterious, right? But we trust Weiner enough now to know this will be at least worth a watch and could easily prove to be a runaway success.
Other than such a talented creator at the helm, The Romanoffs is already getting people talking for its particularly star-studded cast. It'll star Mad Men favorites Christina Hendricks, John Slattery and Jay R. Ferguson, as well as Aaron Eckhart, Isabelle Hupert, Amanda Peet, Jack Huston, Noah Wyle and oh my goodness so many, many more...
When? Friday 12 October
Carnival Row
Carnival Row looks like the stuff our dark fantasy dreams are made of, with fairies, mythical creatures and creepy killings all set against a backdrop of a neo-Victorian city called Burque. The show already has a star-studded cast with Cara Delevingne playing some kind of fairy and Orlando Bloom playing a police officer investigating a series of murders.
Paul McGuigan, best known for directing movies like Lucky Number Slevin and Push, will be at the helm of the new TV show, which will consist of ten episodes. Amazon hasn’t released many more details yet, but production is expected to start in late 2018, with a 2019 release date reportedly on the cards.
When? 2019 (unofficially)
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan
Readers in the US will have been treated to Amazon Prime Video’s first ever ad during the Super Bowl in February 2018, which finally gave us a sneak-peek of the long-awaited Jack Ryan TV series, based on Tom Clancy’s spy novels.
Starring The Office’s John Krasinski, the series is slated to be ten episodes long and will be the first time FBI agent Jack Ryan appears in a TV show. But it’s not the first time he’s been portrayed on a screen. You’ve probably come across Jack Ryan many times before without knowing it – Alec Baldwin played him in The Hunt For Red October, Ben Affleck played him in The Sum Of All Fears and so did Harrison Ford in Patriot Games.
When? 31st August 2018
The Lord of The Rings
We’ve had our fingers crossed for a Lord of the Rings TV show for years, but it looks like it’s now finally going to happen. After some speculation about which company would be taking the reins of Tolkien’s fantasy saga, it’s now official that Amazon has acquired the TV rights for The Lord of the Rings books with a multi-season deal.
There’s been no official word about the stories that’ll be told in the TV series, but at the time of the deal an Amazon spokesperson said in a press release that it would “explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring”.
More recently Amazon has revealed that JD Payne and Patrick McKay will be developing the big-budget drama. It's not been confirmed yet whether the pair, who wrote Star Trek 4, are to be writers or showrunners of the new series, but it's good to know some experienced and enthusiastic creators are at the helm.
When? TBC
Conan
Crush your enemies! It’s finally here! After lots of speculation, Deadline has reported that Amazon is currently working on a new drama called Conan, which is based on the books by Robert E. Howard.
The new show will have Colony co-creator Ryan Condal at the helm as the creator and writer, alongside Game of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik. According to early reports, the show will focus on Conan’s original story taken from Howard’s books, but they’re the only details we have for now.
Although the story of Conan was written by Howard back in 1932, and published as a series of stories in Weird Tales magazine, it’s been adapted for the screen a few times. The most popular was Conan The Barbarian, which was released in 1982 with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role.
The move to create an original show about the iconic Cimmerian, alongside the news of The Lord of the Rings prequel stories, points to a big fantasy world-building focus for Amazon. This is hardly surprising given the huge success of Game of Thrones, which many critics believe the streaming platforms will try and ride the wave of with their own fantasy genre offerings.
When? TBC
Good Omens
In 2017 Amazon lifted the lid on its plans for a TV series adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett’s fantasy novel, Good Omens. Although the show isn’t set to be released until 2019, leaked images of David Tennant, Michael Sheen and Jon Hamm in character have been already been causing a stir among fans.
Those who loved the novel will be happy to hear Neil Gaiman has also written the six-part series, which is being produced by BBC Studios with Doctor Who and Outlander director Douglas Mackinnon at the helm.
When? 2019
- That's what's coming in the future, but this is what you should be watching on Amazon Prime right now
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