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In a surprise move, former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond have signed a three-year deal with Amazon for a new motoring show. Earlier rumours suggested that the trio—who left the program earlier this year when Clarkson was let go as a consequence of punching a producer—would sign a deal with rival streaming service Netflix.
While the show being created for Amazon Prime—which requires a yearly subscription of £79 in the UK and $99 in the US—doesn't currently have a name, the company has confirmed that it will go into production shortly and launch in 2016. If you don't want Prime's free shipping, you can get Amazon Instant Video on its own with a (slightly) cheaper monthly subscription (£5.99 in the UK). The show will form part of Amazon Prime's original programming line-up, which currently includes the Steven Spielberg produced Extant, and Ridley Scott's The Man in the High Castle.
Landing the ex-Top Gear presenters, as well as ex-producer and creative force behind the show Andy Wilman, is quite the coup for Amazon. At its peak, Top Gear was the most watched factual program in the world, with a global audience of around 350 million people a year. Even if only a few of those people pay to join Prime, Amazon could be looking at making a very large sum of money.
Will you watch?
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Friday July 31 2015, @07:54AM
From what I recall, Tesla had seen the show before it aired and didn't object. Later on they changed their minds and complained.
I think the main complaint was that there was a voice over complaining about battery life and it then cut to a scene of a couple of people pushing the car off the track, and according to the logs Tesla had, the car either hadn't run out of power or it had been driving fast for a couple of hours (i.e. longer than the video suggested).