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The most recent season of Game of Thrones was plagued by leaks after HBO was hacked by a group of ransom seekers who were offered $250,000 worth of Bitcoin to stop distributing episodes—an amount which is now worth about 40% less than it was when they made their offer.
As a result, the network has gone to great lengths to keep a lid on things ahead of the final season of the show. They employed drone-shooting technology, went through the trouble of filming multiple endings, and even gave actors self-destructing scripts in order to keep people in the dark.
In 2017, Amazon decided to get in on the fantasy game when they announced they’d be producing a series based on Lord of the Rings, which is already slated to run five seasons and could end up being the most expensive show ever made.
We don’t know that many details about the show, and based on a report from the Hollywood Reporter, the company plans to keep it that way.
The outlet spoke with Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke and asked her what she could reveal about the upcoming series. She didn’t address the plot but she did shine some light on the lengths they’re going in order to keep things under wraps:
There’s a fantastic writers room working under lock and key. They’re already generating really exciting material. They’re down in Santa Monica. You have to go through such clearance, and they have all their windows taped closed. And there’s a security guard that sits outside, and you have to have a fingerprint to get in there, because their whole board is up on a thing of the whole season.
I for one can’t think of an environment that breeds creativity better than a room with the windows taped shut.