The media story was Bezos said 'We have all the money on earth, where's my Game of Thrones', i.e. a high budget, high prestige genre show, and that he liked the concept of doing a Lord of the Rings show.
Obviously, there are a laundry list of reasons for why it is a disaster, from not paying for the rights to the source material you'd actually need, inexperienced leadership, race swaps, unsupported gender focus, lack of involvement from the film group (to be fair, The Hobbit firmly establishes they aren't perfect either), lore changes pissing off the hardcore audience, etc.
Industry rumors are no one at Amazon is happy with the end result either - the production has already swapped countries at least once to lower the budget - and it is very up in the air if it will get the planned Season 4 or 5.
