According to a press statement from Amazon, the two-episode premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attracted 25 million viewers worldwide in just 24 hours, making it the most successful debut in Prime Video history.
"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," Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke said in a statement.
With a first season budget of $465 million and fierce competition from HBO's House of the Dragon series, there was a lot at stake for the show but it managed to have a successful premiere so far.
House of the Dragon also smashed HBO viewing record after it garnered more than 9 million viewers on its linear HBO and streaming HBO Max platforms.
Freezing Reviews
In an unusual move, Amazon also delayed The Rings of Power reviews by 72 hours to weed out trolls, according to Variety. It appeared to have "review bombed" on websites like Rotten Tomatoes, where users gave it a 37 percent rating even though critics gave it an 84 percent.
The show has received criticism for using actors of color to play characters such as dwarves, elves, and other characters. The studio intends to assess each review to identify whether it was written by a human or a bot.
The practice was first made public by Amazon when the baseball television program A League of Their Own launched on August 12. That approach appears to have been successful because the latter received a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars on Prime Video as opposed to a 94 percent Rotten Tomatoes critic score, as noted by Engadget.
According to the show's IMDB summary, The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is similar to House of the Dragon, which takes the story years before Game of Thrones.
This prequel begins in a time of relative peace, featuring both familiar and new characters, who are about to face a great threat of evil to Middle-earth.
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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla
