Amazon Paid $250 Million For Clarkson, Hammond And May Deal

When it was announced on Thursday that Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May had signed a deal for a new show on Amazon Prime Instant Video, our minds naturally drifted to one particular question: just how much was needed to secure the trio? Well, according to the Financial Times, the answer is a whopping $250 million (£160 million).

To put that in context, that’s not far off the BBC’s typical total annual expenditure on ‘talent’ across all its services, which a few years ago was at £200 million. The Amazon deal is for three years, however, and snagging three big names will no doubt result in a huge spike in Prime sign-ups. We’ll have to wait and see just how well it pays off for the company.

We also now know how many episodes to expect. The original press release stated three series with no mention of episode count, but the number has now been revealed as 36.

There’s still no word on what the new show will be called, but we reckon some of the suggestions you came up with yesterday are worth a shout!