LOTR: The Rings of Power is Amazon Prime’s magnum opus which is a prequel to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books and Jackson’s trilogy is out on the streaming giant. 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 when the long awaited series debuted on Amazon Prime Video, it debuted with two episodes, giving all the fans a double feature. The anticipation of a LOTR series was so high that despite it being a slug fest, it had the biggest debut of all time, beating HBO’s House of the Dragon. However, before the release of the first two episodes Amazon Executives were extremely nervous seeing the success of House of the Dragon.
LOTR: The Rings of Power Why were Amazon Executives Nervous?
The question makes sense as if anything this was a good thing for Amazon, it showed that people wanted big fantasy shows set in these lands that we’re never going to see. Well, you might think that but ponder over this for a moment, as popular as Lord of the Rings is Game of Thrones success on TV is unparalleled. So, when they saw that the GOT prequel despite its distasteful season 8 is getting such great numbers they were “shitting” their pants, figuratively. A source confirms this for us.
“It was never about the critics, it’s all about consumers,” an insider familiar with Amazon’s internal politics told The Hollywood Reporter. “All Jeff [Bezos] cares about is consumer obsession. If you look at the history of Amazon, every division lived and died based on that. [House of the] Dragon matters because all of a sudden there is a benchmark. It is their closest comp to success,” they said. “When [Amazon] saw Dragon grew in its second episode and brought in 20 million viewers, they were sh–ting their pants.”
However, now as we know that Rings of Power had the biggest debut and it may not have the loyal audience as House of the Dragon but it is performing really well. As we have stats that show the show has already been watched 1.25 Billion minutes on Prime and that’s just the US data. However, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke assured fans the series is popular across the world. “The show is performing unbelievably internationally,” she told THR. “So we’ve been feeling pretty great. To see the U.S. slice come out is just icing on the cake.”
Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power’s first six 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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