The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has officially become Prime Video's biggest-ever debut TV series, it has been confirmed.
According to Amazon, 25 million people around the world tuned in to watch The Rings of Power during the fantasy series' first day on Prime Video. Amazon says this is the service's biggest premiere ever (via THR).
Amazon doesn't typically release viewership info about most of its shows, and they have not released any further data about this impressive record, including which show held the record prior to the arrival of The Rings of Power or what the previous record was. However, if you consider that there are more than 200 million Amazon Prime subscribers (as of April 2021), 1 in 8 Prime viewers watched The Rings of Power when the series first debuted.
In a statement, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke said: "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.
"I am so grateful to the Tolkien Estate — and to our showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, executive producer Lindsey Weber, cast and crew — for their tireless collaborative efforts and boundless creative energy. And it is the tens of millions of fans watching — clearly as passionate about Middle-earth as we are — who are our true measure of success", she added.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on September 1 (or September 2, depending on time zones) with a two-episode premiere. The series casts us back to J.R.R. Tolkien's Second Age, thousands of years prior to the events depicted in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie trilogies.
There, we join an ensemble of new and returning characters such as Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), the Harfoot Nori (Markella Kavenagh), silvan elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), and a mysterious figure known only as The Stranger. We join them at a time of peace, though they're soon forced to confront the long-feared return of evil to Middle-earth.
Fellow fantasy epic House of the Dragon had a similarly successful launch last week, as HBO announced House of the Dragon season 2 was on the way after it premiered to the network's biggest audience for any new original series in HBO's history.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming now exclusively on Prime Video. New episodes drop every Friday.
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