and Amazon's$1 billion bet on the Lord of the
Rings franchise is finally here, Lord of the Rings
, the Rings of Power debuting this labor day weekend
pulling in 25 million viewers in its first day and
cheddar news senior reporter Michelle Costello joins me now to
break down what it means for amazon and the streaming
space as a whole, Michelle is great to see
you. So amazon spending a billion dollars on this
series. The Rings of Power. How integral is
its success to the future of amazon Prime video?
Well you know, amazon has done a pretty good
job of building brand recognition for its prime product but
it's nowhere near the top. So right now,
according to parrot analytics, it's about seventh in terms
of overall platforms when it comes to corporate or brand
identity that audiences want and when it comes to originals
, it's number two, but that number two is
far behind netflix. So they're hoping with this billion
dollar bet on the Rings of Power they're going to
be able to draw in more viewers and use it
as a marketing vehicle. So breaking down that billion
dollar mark, it was about 200$50 million lord
of the rings books as well as side story.
So it's not even based on any really source material
that was written as a full book. And the
second part about this is, it cost$465 million
TV show to date. But it is paying off
dividends So far for Amazon$25 million Amazon Fire TV
devices. They also brought in some of the soundtrack
to Amazon music. So you can see it across
a lot of different products for them. But they
need to sustain that momentum. So in in hopes
to sustain the momentum for Amazon, how does it
rank in terms of demand for original content among the
streamers? It would seem like a lot probably is
riding on this. So right now amazon is at
about 11.3% of the market according to parent parent analytics
when it comes to original content as I mentioned before
, it's second place. But that pales in comparison
to the number one spot which is netflix at 41.2%
. So yes, it is second but not as
uh nowhere near close netflix, then you have Disney
Plus, which is after that. But if you
think about it, Disney Plus has way fewer shows
than prime or netflix. So it's a really big
step for them to take a little bit more of
that netflix pie. And that doesn't mean that these
other networks aren't spending as much on their shows as
well. Let's take something like netflix's Stranger Things this
past season, season four, it costs about$30
million per episode to produce that show. So they're
also spending a lot of money on their content.
Let's take something that competes directly with the Rings of
Power, HBO max's House of the Dragon. That's
about$200 million for this 10 episode season. But
you have to consider the fact that um they already
have a built in franchise with those game of throne
fans. So it's really been what would have been
a big smash hit for amazon, you know,
knowing that the Lord of the Rings has such a
big fan base, it isn't as bad as it
could have been in the past because everyone's spending so
much money on content. But if you think that
amazon's bets are only on the Rings of Power,
you'd be mistaken. They're also producing one of the
most, another, one of the most expensive shows
to date. That's the Russo Brothers citadel, that's
reportedly at$200 million an episode. So they're really
putting a lot of money to move up that notch
and take some of netflix's pie. Yeah, that's
a lot of cheddar, 200 million an episode,
wow. So, you know, amazon Michelle putting
a pause user reviews for the new series lasting three
days after its debut, Do you think that would
be a common practice going forward? Well, this
actually really start sparked in response to a League of
Their Own, which is another amazon series. It
was really flooded by trolls who didn't agree with the
political stance of the show. So they got a
lot of negative reviews not based on the content.
So amazon said they're going to pause on reviews for
three days so they can weed through the remarks and
just make sure that the reviews that are actually going
in are going to be good right now. It's
about 85% on rotten tomatoes. However, you can't
really stop reviews on social media. We have people
like Elon musk who is a big Lord of the
Rings fan saying he's not happy with the series.
So we're gonna have to wait and see. As
I said, first two episodes are out but we're
gonna get more trickling in and it's a big bet
for amazon and hopefully at least we'll get more than
marketing. They'll also get that positive buzz we will
be watching That's for sure. Trying to use the
senior reporter Michelle. Castilian Michelle, thank you