The prequel to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books and Jackson’s trilogy is out on Amazon Prime- LOTR: Rings of Power. When the idea of the series was pitched there was a bidding war between Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Prime finally won the bidding war at $250 Million. That’s just the sale price. Since, Amazon had the rights to the material, the show entered development and they made one choice that changed everything. They decided not to adapt the books exactly as they’re, the story of the show starts 200 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. The show is set in the second age, the same time which was presented to us as the back story in the films.
Amazon’s choice has turned controversial as the fans of the books and Peter Jackson’s trilogy are unhappy. To be honest, the series is still loyal as the stories being told are from Tolkien’s world. There was a lot buzz around for the series, both in a positive and negative way. So the long awaited series debuted on Amazon Prime Video on 2nd September. The series debuted with two episodes, giving all the fans a double feature. And today, as the month comes to a close we have the final debut numbers for the first two episodes of the show are out. Let’s see how did the series fare in comparison to HBO’s House of the Dragon.
Is LOTR: Rings of Power More Successful Than House of the Dragon?
The Lord of the Rings prequel has not been to get warm response by fans or critics. No one has denied the magnanimous scale of the show but when it comes to storytelling…its a hit or miss. The prequel is the adaptation of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. The show seems like a loyal adaptation of Tolkien’s world. However, I can understand the notion amongst fans that the series feels like an attempt at proving they can do Lord of the Rings better than Tolkien.
Amazon knows the power that they’re wielding and they’ve not put their foot down when to comes to making the LOTR prequel. Apart from the $250 Million bidding war, the first season of the show has been made on a budget of $465 Million, making it the most expensive TV show of all time. Sorry Game of Thrones. Even though show was review bombed with only 37% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it seems like the anticipation of the show was so high that it lead to amazing debut viewership numbers.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, Prime Video’s new mega-budget fantasy epic managed to capture a staggering 1.25 billion watch minutes in the wake of its premiere on Sep. 1. HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel continued to score reasonably well, however, with a total of 781 million minutes watched on its Max streaming service. One caveat to this metric is that it does not include audience figures for those watching the series on HBO’s traditional television service, a sizable portion of the overall viewership.
The Catch
The numbers you read above are impressive no doubt, I mean I would go on to say that the first two episodes of Rings of Power has crushed House of the Dragon. However, these are the numbers that are one month old. They don’t give us idea of the current state of these two prequels. Apart from being better in quality, House of the Dragon’s audience retention rate is massive. Something that the Rings of Power can only dream of. House of the Dragon has an average audience of 29 Million per episode.
While the Rings of Power simply pale in comparison as an average of 9.5 million viewers for the first two episodes, it beat out the likes of fellow Prime fantasy epic The Wheel of Time, which managed 6.6 million viewers across its initial three episodes. After the soaring debut, Rings of Power’s viewership numbers were destined to crash given the inferior quality of the show. House of the Dragon is getting better in quality and viewership numbers with every episode’s release.
Every week I’ve covered an increase in the show’s numbers, add to that the massive average audience that demands the show. The latest episode’s viewership numbers in the first 24 hours of release were 18.5 Million. For now with the way the audience is receiving Rings of Power, Amazon can only dream of such numbers. Hopefully, the show will do just to Tolkien’s work and get better.
LOTR: Rings of Power’s first five episodes are currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. New episodes will debut on every Thursday or Friday on Prime Video depending on the region you live in, at 9 pm ET.
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