Amazon's Billion-Dollar 'Rings of Power' Bundle Loses Ratings and Viewers Battle Against HBO's 'House of the Dragon'
The "Lord of the Rings" spin-off, "The Rings of Power", launched on Prime Video on September 1. The company reportedly spent nearly $1 billion to develop the streaming video series. Tolkien's original series has a rabid fanbase. Upsetting them could harm Amazon.
Amazon's billion-dollar bet on its new 'Lord of the Rings' streaming TV series falls flat with initial ratings, posing risks for Amazon Studios and the Prime membership program of the company.
Amazon via Business Insider
Amazon via Business InsiderAlthough critics praised the series' scope and ambition, "The Rings of Power" resonated with audiences, who gave the show a 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (In contrast, Peter Jackson's early 2000s Lord of the Rings trilogy earned viewership scores between 86 and 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.) Even on Amazon-owned IMDb, audiences rated " The Rings of Power" at an anemic level of 6.8/10.
HBO's "House of the Dragon," released last month, is doing much better. It has an 8.8/10 rating on IMDb and an 84% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. For each three-day show's post-debut window, "House of the Dragon" drew 51% more viewers than "Rings of Power," according to Whip Media data reported by TheWrap. The publication also looked at data from Samba TV, which tracks viewership through connected TVs in the United States. It told a similar story: 3.1 million households watched the first two episodes of "Rings of Fire" in the first three days, while 4.8 million watched the HBO premiere in the same window.
Counterintuitively, "a rabid fan base, including those obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien's original books may be to blame for Amazon's challenges.
"It will be impossible for Amazon to please the millions of Tolkien fans, despite the series' huge budget," Tom Forte, an analyst for investment firm D.A. Davidson wrote in a recent note titled " Jar Jar Binks Ruined My Adulthood" which drew comparisons between "The Rings of Power" and "Star Wars" fan outrage at the 1999 film "The Phantom Menace".
"There's bound to be a character, plot, subplot, line, etc. in the show that will upset/disappoint many avid fans and there's even a chance that the show itself will be revealed. disappointing," Forte continued.
Amazon Prime Video has disabled viewers' ability to rewatch the TV showLow viewership ratings signal a "greater than zero" risk that some Prime members could cancel their subscriptions, Forte said in an interview Tuesday. Part of Amazon's strategy with big budget streaming video content is to get more people to subscribe to Prime, as they often end up buying many of the company's other products and services.
>On its own Prime Video platform, Amazon disabled viewers' ability to rewatch "The Rings of Power," to protect the series from an onslaught of inflammatory reviews, including some lambasting Amazon's decision to choose actors of color in the fantasy series. Six days after the release of the first episode, the series still has no reviews.
"Although it was well intentioned, disabling reviews was a bad idea," Forte said. "It will only make things worse."
On other review sites, people who left negative reviews said "The Rings of Power" was a departure from the spirit of Tolkien's work.
"Cover your eyes, lest this snotty filth of a spectacle sully your love for Tolkien," wrote a Rotten Tomatoes reviewer, who gave the series a half-star. "The story is NOT TOLKIEN - If you're a Tolkien fan - you won't like this," another half-star reviewer wrote.
A die-hard Tolkien fan echoed these comments on Twitter: "Tolkien is turning in his grave," said Tesla CEO El...
Amazon's billion-dollar bet on its new 'Lord of the Rings' streaming TV series falls flat with initial ratings, posing risks for Amazon Studios and the Prime membership program of the company.
Amazon via Business Insider
Amazon via Business InsiderAlthough critics praised the series' scope and ambition, "The Rings of Power" resonated with audiences, who gave the show a 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (In contrast, Peter Jackson's early 2000s Lord of the Rings trilogy earned viewership scores between 86 and 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.) Even on Amazon-owned IMDb, audiences rated " The Rings of Power" at an anemic level of 6.8/10.
HBO's "House of the Dragon," released last month, is doing much better. It has an 8.8/10 rating on IMDb and an 84% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. For each three-day show's post-debut window, "House of the Dragon" drew 51% more viewers than "Rings of Power," according to Whip Media data reported by TheWrap. The publication also looked at data from Samba TV, which tracks viewership through connected TVs in the United States. It told a similar story: 3.1 million households watched the first two episodes of "Rings of Fire" in the first three days, while 4.8 million watched the HBO premiere in the same window.
Counterintuitively, "a rabid fan base, including those obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien's original books may be to blame for Amazon's challenges.
"It will be impossible for Amazon to please the millions of Tolkien fans, despite the series' huge budget," Tom Forte, an analyst for investment firm D.A. Davidson wrote in a recent note titled " Jar Jar Binks Ruined My Adulthood" which drew comparisons between "The Rings of Power" and "Star Wars" fan outrage at the 1999 film "The Phantom Menace".
"There's bound to be a character, plot, subplot, line, etc. in the show that will upset/disappoint many avid fans and there's even a chance that the show itself will be revealed. disappointing," Forte continued.
Amazon Prime Video has disabled viewers' ability to rewatch the TV showLow viewership ratings signal a "greater than zero" risk that some Prime members could cancel their subscriptions, Forte said in an interview Tuesday. Part of Amazon's strategy with big budget streaming video content is to get more people to subscribe to Prime, as they often end up buying many of the company's other products and services.
>On its own Prime Video platform, Amazon disabled viewers' ability to rewatch "The Rings of Power," to protect the series from an onslaught of inflammatory reviews, including some lambasting Amazon's decision to choose actors of color in the fantasy series. Six days after the release of the first episode, the series still has no reviews.
"Although it was well intentioned, disabling reviews was a bad idea," Forte said. "It will only make things worse."
On other review sites, people who left negative reviews said "The Rings of Power" was a departure from the spirit of Tolkien's work.
"Cover your eyes, lest this snotty filth of a spectacle sully your love for Tolkien," wrote a Rotten Tomatoes reviewer, who gave the series a half-star. "The story is NOT TOLKIEN - If you're a Tolkien fan - you won't like this," another half-star reviewer wrote.
A die-hard Tolkien fan echoed these comments on Twitter: "Tolkien is turning in his grave," said Tesla CEO El...
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