The premiere of two episodes of “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power” has already had 25 million views worldwide in 24 hours. This makes the series the biggest debut in Prime Video history, Amazon said in a press release.
“It is somehow fitting that Tolkien’s stories — among the most popular of all time, and what many consider to be the true origin of the fantasy genre — have led us to this proud moment,” said Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke.
Hardly anyone thought that the series would fail. The first season’s budget was $465 million, and it was competed by rival HBO series “House of Dragons”, which also recently debuted with the highest ratings in HBO history with 9.986 million viewers on HBO’s linear and HBO Max streaming platforms.
Amazon also purposely delayed reviews of the novelty by 72 hours to filter out the trolls, Variety reported. It turned out that the series received mixed reviews on websites such as Rotten Tomatoes, where it received 37 percent from users but 84 percent from critics. The series has been trolled over its decision to hire actors of color to play the roles of elves, dwarves, and other characters.
The studio plans to screen reviews to determine if they are legitimate or created by a bot or troll. Amazon first started doing this when A League of Their Own debuted on August 12. Apparently, this strategy worked: the series received a 4.3 out of 5-star rating on Prime Video, compared to a 94 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes (though, this also matches the 85 percent viewer rating on RT).
