BBC megastars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are white-hot commodities in the world of television, and they’re about to milk it for all it’s worth.
Since June of this year, the trio, former hosts of Britain’s most sensational car show, ‘Top Gear,’ have gradually announced plans to produce new, original program in the style of their former BBC show. After walking off the show following a heated contract dispute between Clarkson and ‘Top Gear’ executives, Clarkson and his co-stars all opted to leave and find a new platform for a car show of their own design. In July, we reported their deal with Amazon Prime to air episodes of the new show, as yet unnamed. Now, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, has revealed details to UK’s Sunday Telegraph pertaining to his business relationship with Clarkson, Hammond, and May – namely, that the show will be “very, very, very expensive” for Amazon to produce.
According to Bezos, the investment in the show, while steep, should pay dividends in quality.
“We have a lot of things in the pipeline, which I think viewers in the UK and around the world are going to love. And I think Clarkson’s new show is going to be one of those,” Bezos says. “[Clarkson, Hammond and May] will give us the freedom to make the programme we want… there’s a budget to produce programmes of the quality we want and this is the future.”
While few specifics have been released, it has been confirmed that the high-dollar show will be an informational car program in the style of ‘Top Gear,’ and it will premiere in 2016. Amazon Prime has signed on for the first three series of the show, which will star Clarkson, Hammond, and May, alongside ex-‘Top Gear’ producer, Andy Wilman – all BBC cash cows who are “worth a lot and they know it,” in Bezos’s words.
Bezos is “very excited” about the prospects for Amazon, and given the track record of the hosts on ‘Top Gear,’ he has excellent reason.