A couple of Hollywood insiders are calling for Amazon to scrap it’s massively expensive The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV show.
The insider, who remained anonymous, spoke with The Ankler, and declared, “They should cancel it and move on.”
He added, “You’re a few executives removed from it now — who are you worried about embarrassing?”
The comments come after Amazon MGM Studios announced that Peter Friedlander would take over as the Head of Global TV following the departure of Vernon Sanders.
A second insider added, “They need to find a way to make it come to an end. Nobody is thinking of Lord of the Rings when you talk about Amazon’s big hits. You’re thinking about Fallout, Reacher and Summer, all shows that cost significantly less.”
To that point, The Ankler reports the show has cost Prime Video north of half a billion dollars. It claims the show itself cost above $465 million and that’s on top of the $250 million the company spent to secure the rights.
And there is little to show for that cost. Kim Masters at The Hollywood Reporter reported back in April 2023 that only 37% of viewers completed the series meaning a whopping 63% watched some of it and then turned it off and did not look back.
Masters reported, “While Amazon, like other streamers, provides only limited data — and internally, it held information even more closely than usual on the series — sources confirm that The Rings of Power had a 37 percent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series).”
She added, “Overseas, it reached 45 percent. (A 50 percent completion rate would be a solid but not spectacular result, according to insiders).”
That report appeared accurate as Samba TV noted that viewership for the Season 2 premiere was down by nearly 50% compared to Season 1. In September 2022, the firm reported that the show’s Season 1 premiere attracted 1.8 million U.S. households. At the beginning of September following the Season 2 premiere it reported that only 902,000 U.S. households watched. That’s a decline of 49.8%.
It was not just Samba TV either. As noted by X user NowItsKnown, Nielsen reported back in 2022 that the show’s two-episode premiere raked in 1.253 billion minutes watched.
With the Season 2 three-episode premiere it only brought in 1.015 billion minutes watched.
If you do a simple calculation where you divide the total minutes watched by the total run time, it gives you 9.4 million for the first season and 4.9 million views for the second season. That’s a decline of 47%.
That trend continued with the season finales as well. The week the Season 2 finale aired saw the show’s total minutes only bring in about half of the week when the Season 1 finale aired.
The Season 1 finale brought in 1.137 billion minutes watched while the Season 2 finale only did 527 million minutes watched. That’s a decline of 53.6%.
In fact, those Season 2 numbers are on par with Lucasfilm’s The Acolyte that was scrapped after its first season due to poor viewership. Nielsen reported that the week The Acolyte’s finale aired it only brought in 335 million minutes watched. If you do a simple run-time calculation that comes to around 6.8 million views given the final episode had a run time of 49 minutes.
The Rings of Power Season 2 finale did marginally better. A simple run time calculation for the week of its finale comes out to 7.12 million views given its finale had a run time of 74 minutes.
However, what might be preventing Prime Video from pulling the plug on the show is the fact that the Ankler claims that if Prime Video fails to deliver on its initial five-season, 50 episode deal it will owe the Tolkien Estate $20 million per season.
The name of the Tolkien Estates contract lawyer please. 20m per season? For failure?
Something here still doesn't ad up and that's not due to reporting but the info that been provided by Amazon. At this point its clear that with the current storyline, the show is a bust and not by a little. If the series was cancelled then per Amazon they'd owe the estate 20 million x 3 since only 2 seasons have been delivered, which means 60 million. How is that not a much cheaper route to go then to make 3 more seasons in which there is NO way each season will cost less than 20 million.
Making 3 more season is definitely going to cist more than 60 million so why not pull the plug? The production cost of season 2 alone was around 450 million and season 1 was around 465 million. It's safe too assume that short of some drastic changes a season 3 is going to be around 450 million so hos doe sit make sense to choose to continue on with 3 more season versus paying a 60 million fine to bail?
There's got to be more to this or the decision makers at Amazon still believe that promotion of the message is worth any costs. Since a season 3 has already started production they could have tried course correcting, dumping the existing creatives that have driven the show into the ground or at the least bring in additional help and put them in charge and have them fix the story to bring back viewers. Maybe something like that did happen but something tells me probably not. Al of this hints at the answer being higherups that can make the call to waste half a billion pr season believe that the promotion of their ideological messaging is more important than the money and the $20 million per season fine they've mentioned is meant to try and convince people that is why the shows not ben cancelled.