When The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power premiered back in September, Amazon Studios had high hopes for their massive investment.
According to studio head Vernon Sanders, the show based on the hit franchise, The Lord of the Rings has been a massive success. The eight episode event was watched by more than 100 million people worldwide on the day it premiered with more than 24 billion minutes streamed. The series quickly became Prime Video’s biggest premiere ever breaking all previous records and also topped Neilsen’s streaming chart on it’s premiere weekend.
It wasn’t just the premiere, the season finale was also a hit, trending in 27 different countries for a cumulative 426 hours.
In an interview, Sanders called the series a “tremendous success.” He said,
“We green-lit this, we made this investment, just on the rights, so long ago, that I don’t even know what the hopes were. But it has been a tremendous success. It is, by far, our most-watched show, first-season scripted series, by far. It’s our most acquisitive show.
We still have millions of people coming to this show within the last month, millions and millions of people coming to the show for the first time, even in the last month
So, it’s just been a powerhouse for us. And, as big of an investment as it’s been, it has more than paid off for us. So, we’re thrilled. But it’s a great question. I don’t even know what the initial hopes were, but we’ve also grown so significantly as a service, with both this and the NFL, over the fall. We’ve just seen a tremendous surge of new memberships, and I think there’s been some press about how that’s impacted our membership numbers and [driven] us to be number one in the US.”
The show was developed by J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay for Amazon.
