In recent days, a social uproar has broken out The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powera series of jokes inspired by JRR Tolkien's billionaire work, so much so that it cost Jeff Bezos the impetus to take revenge on HBO for his own Game of Thrones-style fantasy series phenomenon, a goal that has so far certainly failed. Perception suggests, The Rings of Power never created the same irrepressible mainstream hype among the public, thus falling outside the target audience of fans of the genre. Got itbut it has become a sector, a niche product, perhaps not a result capable of justifying the largest investment made so far in the history of television series. But the problem seems to be even more serious, because the episodes of the second season, broadcast weekly from August 29, are naturally broadcast on Amazon Prime Video, according to what he writes. Hollywood Reporter United Stateswould not have triggered some kind of avalanche of streams, in fact, it seems that only 37% of users who clicked play actually reached the end of the episode, and also that (given Samba TVa company that provides real-time audience insights and analytics), only a little over 900,000 users watched the first episode of the second season in the first four days, exactly half of those who watched the first episode of the first season within two days. So half of the viewers are watching twice as long. Objectively discouraging data, at least when compared to a nine-figure investment, an investment that is roundly rejected even by critics of Tutorwho wrote: “It's often not a good product, even remotely. There are moments, and this happens in almost every episode, where I found myself laughing under my breath at how inept what I was watching seemed. The dialogue seems a bit forced, full of awkward and awkward narrative coincidences.”
The answer
This pessimistic view of the series is not shared by Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM Studios, who writes in an internal letter to the company: “Looking at the second weekend of launch, according to our main parameters, the series is proving to be another huge success: 40 million viewers have already seen the second season. We have also observed – continues the manager – that tens of millions of viewers have rewatched the first season since the beginning of August. And a significant part of our audience comes from outside the United States, which demonstrates the strong global appeal of the series and the extraordinary growth in the number of Prime Video users around the world.” In the meantime, a third season is already being written and will certainly be produced Patrick McKay, one of the showrunners of the series, said: “Let's cook!” Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, also downplayed the value of this data, arguing that in the era of streaming shows, you never know when a series will be seen and perhaps suddenly become a hit, it could happen even years later. Is he right? We in Italy, faced with an extraordinary case at home, would say yes, we are talking about Boristhe little masterpiece by Giacomo Ciarrapico, Mattia Torre and Luca Vendruscolo broadcast in 2007 on Sky but whose success exploded when Netflix put it on streaming during the first lockdown. Of course, it must be said, Boris This is not a billion dollar series.