Amazon Prime’s new Top Gear: “They’re worth a lot” Jeff Bezos says of Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has revealed what he thinks about Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond after signing the trio to star in a new car show on Amazon's Netflix-style Prime Video streaming service.
The show, due to air next year, will be “very, very, very expensive,” Bezos said, speaking to the Daily Telegraph, “They’re worth a lot and they know it”.
Amazon signed up the lucrative presenters after Clarkson was sacked by the BBC for assaulting a producer. Chris Evans has been signed up as a replacement host for the hugely successful show which has generated millions of pounds in profits for the BBC over the years and is broadcast in hundreds of countries, consistently ranking as the BBC's most-watched show.
After generating interest from rival British broadcasters and streaming services such as Netflix to create a new Top Gear style show, Amazon won the race to bag the trio for mark two .
Speaking on whether the show would come to define Prime, Bezos told the Telegraph:
“It can’t just be one show, it has to be a number of things. 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.
I think we’re in a golden age of television, so if you go back in time even just five years, you couldn’t get A-list talent to do TV serials, or, if you could, it was a rare thing. But that’s flipped completely.
“The investment is very high now in serialised TV, and the amount of time you have to tell a story is much greater. That format change opens up a lot of storytelling possibilities, which, when mixed with the movie-like production standards, and the A-list talent, is why we’re seeing amazing television.