There’s been plenty of talk about THE RINGS OF POWER season 2 with criticism covering nearly every aspect of the series. Critics’ scores have maintained consistently high sitting at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes although debate could be shared regarding audience reception. Whether or not the show is loyal amongst its Tolkien-loving fans and its lore.
Whereas fandom will have differing subjective opinions as to the quality and faithfulness of the source material, as of yesterday, the numbers have come out to speak for themselves and it’s pretty obvious that from a business standpoint, THE RINGS OF POWER season 2 has thus sustained its goodwill with over 55 million viewers one month into its showing.
This is an impressive feat to accomplish in today’s television landscape given that we’re at a time when pretty much all of the entertainment industry across nearly all verticals is sitting on a hot seated dumpster fire. LA’s Hollywood is on the decline and ceding productions to cheaper options both across the US and internationally plus the industry itself remains down by about 40% in terms of production the past two years since its high.
Here’s the report from Variety taken from Amazon Studios Jennifer Salke‘s memo to staff about “The Rings of Power” viewership.
On August 29, we launched the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Through the second weekend of launch, according to our key measures, the series is showing that we have another huge hit season on our hands as 40 million viewers have already watched S2. We’ve also observed that tens of millions of viewers have watched S1since early August. We’ve seen an impressive amount of our Rings of Power customers coming from outside the US, which is a testament to the show’s resonance with global audiences and the remarkable growth of Prime Video customers worldwide.
Now as to what qualifies as to what counts as a view on a show versus let’s say to someone who watched a video on TikTok is a guess as good as mine but I will say that right now – data is driving the industry. The push for AI in everything is only going to make matters worse – as decisions aren’t being made so much as guided by numbers.
It’s a pretty big deal that The Rings of Powerfor better or worse, has the type of buzz about it with only a slight drop-off regarding ratings from its debut season. The 55 million views in one month is only a slight increase of the 40 million who tuned into the first 4 episodes upon season 2’s debut of RINGS OF POWER but so long as there’s a large viewership… I’m not sure the slow progress matters so long as in total people are tuning in.
In an interview with RadioTimes, executive producer Charlotte Brändström has also said that good news is coming, all but confirming that a new season is likely on the way and will continue Amazon’s initial plans for a five season series of Lord of The Rings. It is also a bit of a positive sign that showrunners McKay & Payne have already begun writing season 3.
Perhaps then the biggest question that remains is whether ‘just fine’ is enough to justify the price tag of THE RINGS OF POWER which sits well over a billion dollars. In contrast, the original Lord of The Rings film trilogy cost around 280 million to make (about half a billion adjusted for inflation today) but was never a guaranteed success out of the gate, as most of the movie’s budget went to the final film and post-production.
Yet, at an age where almost every single vertical is falling to some extent due to outlandish costs and fierce competition, the ability for anything in entertainment to penetrate the audience’s attention span is like firing an arrow and actually getting it to pierce through Mithril armor – a happy coincidence. Because while the costs are incredibly high for Prime to produce this show – this is a company that can commit to finishing as it can afford to burn through money. And the long-term plans regarding developing Lord of The Rings IP might be worth it – even if it’s not fully the show some fans desired.
