Amazon announced in November 2017 it had bought the global television rights and would produce a multi-season series exploring new storylines preceding author J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.
But a promised announcement from the United States tech giant about the series being filmed in New Zealand has yet to materialise.
A Queenstowner with links to the film industry told the Otago Daily Times yesterday he had heard "more positive things this week than I've heard in the past two years since it was first announced".
"But you never know how much conversation has been going on down at the pub."
The "hot" rumour was that people were looking for land in the resort to build a studio, but he remained sceptical.
"Studios are like oil refineries - they take about 10 years to give you a payback.
"If you're going to build one, you're putting up multi, multimillions in equipment, so you're going to need more than just The Lord of the Rings to fill it."
His contacts had told him nothing had been formalised with anybody yet.
"They haven't got jobs out of it, they haven't seen anybody to shake hands with."
A Glenorchy resident told the ODT there had been people in the area "scouting out territory".
"They are definitely looking at sites up here."
However, the industry insider said he did not put much weight on alleged scouting activity at the locations used by Sir Peter Jackson to film his trilogy in the early 2000s.
"You've got to remember the locations they could well be using have been used 100 times, because they're also the best ones for commercials and other movies.
"So you can't read too much into that."
Scouting activity was just as likely to be attributable to other productions coming to the area, which he understood included another Chinese film production and a television series.
