1.3 billion minutes were viewed for the last Ring of Power episode.
781 million minutes were viewed for the last House of the Dragon episode.
Ring of Power has an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics.
38% with fans.
House of the Dragon has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics.
83% with fans.
The Lord of the Rings spinoff series, Ring of Power had a reported cost of 462 million to make, a 250 million dollar initial investment for the series rights and a commitment to spend another billion dollars on future seasons. Despite that, it’s been not given a lot of love for fans for a variety of reasons.
The biggest issue seems to be what Amazon actually had to work with, where the Tolkien estate rejected plans to retell Lord of the Rings as a series, instead giving them rights to random papers set thousands of years prior to the core story, where they also have no legal rights to mention characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn or anyone fans enjoy.
They worked with that and basically made an extremely expensive fanfiction, which has little to do with the core story and was met with some pretty cruel criticisms online for casting black actors and having gay characters, under the cry Amazon was “woking” it up.
Be it the show itself or unfair/bigoted sentiment walking in, the show hasn’t actually proven that popular with reviews, but despite that, it’s on paper doing better than the more popular House of the Dragon.
HBO Max released House of the Dragon as the first prequel to Game of Thrones, which has been near universally praised, after the original series had an unpopular finale. It’s so popular that costume manufacturers/distributors are increasing the Game of Thrones costumes for this Halloween, which lost popularity previously due to the finale/COVID.
So if House of the Dragon is more popular, why is Ring of Power getting more views?
First up, rated R v PG13.
42 million dollars is the average box office gross currently for a rated R movie in the US with national distribution.
Comparing that, it’s 79 million dollars for a PG13 movie and 82 million for a PG movie.
Rated R movies/shows statistically make less money and get fewer viewers, so much so actors like Hugh Jackman have had to cut their own salaries by millions to make movies such as Logan rated R. Obvious exceptions such as Joker, Passion of the Christ and Deadpool exist of blockbuster rated R movies, but the majority are just duds or Oscar bait.
House of the Dragon so far…
A man’s wang is casually cut off in the first episode.
An actress playing a 14 year old goes to a brothel with her uncle.
An actor playing a 15 year old is shown getting to know his body naked standing by a window.
A 50 year old debates marrying a 12 year old and the actress who was 12 in real life talked about bedding him.
A 12 year old boy gets his eye cut out.
It’s an amazing show, but it’s violent, sexual, not kid friendly and loses viewers from that.
Second, Amazon v HBO Max.
This is probably the simplest reason and that’s HBO Max having 77 million subscribers versus Amazon Prime at well over 200 million.
Amazon is a much bigger platform at the moment and with nearly 3x the total users, it’s easy to guess why Amazon is winning.
It is important to know HBO globally has 147 million subscribers on the original product, but only 47 million of those are in the United States and the other 100 million come mainly in cable package deals overseas, which might not carry the same viewing rates. Some countries have HBO as a free add on, which never gets used.
Third, Lord of the Rings v Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones has sold 90 million copies since being introduced in 1996.
Lord of the Rings, which is a 80+ year old franchise has sold 150 million copies of the core book and 500 million copies including spinoffs and translations with editing changes on the original.
They were also hit films, with the original original making 2.9 billion dollars and the Hobbit trilogy making 2.9 billion also.
Game of Thrones was a hit show, but just not as big of a franchise.
And four and final reason, maybe Ring of Power isn’t that bad?
Full transparency, I’ve never actually watched the original Lord of the Rings movies in full, read the books and I’ve not watched one minute of Ring of Power.
I see a lot of complaints from two groups of people.
- Hardcore fans of the franchise.
- Borderline altright people, upset about a black hobbit.
Those people exist, but besides that, most people seem to be saying “It’s good enough to watch”.
Nothing super positive, but not negative, which sometimes can be enough to get a show millions or even tens of millions of weekly viewers.
I don’t think I’ll ever actually watch this thing, but when looking at the numbers, it’s not the failure many people want it to be.