JCC Rings of Power vs House of the Dragon

Rings of Power

-Amazon Prime video streaming has 200 million subscribers
-Eight episode series
-Premiere: Friday, 9/2 with 2 episodes
-Cost per episode: $60 million
-Based on: The Silmarillion, first published in 1977, and whatever else. After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher became the keeper of Tolkien's estate and Middle Earth. He died in 2020 and now what. The Silmarillion has sold less than half of one percent of the combined copies of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, but was still a best seller of the late 20th century.
-Fun "fact": other JCCers have described Amazon's rights to produce Rings of Power as complicated and precarious and indeed there is a long and rich history of litigation over tv/film/other rights to Tolkien's publications.
-Audience: Amazon Prime subscribers, Tolkien fans, fans of the Peter Jackson films. Fantasy fans.
-Description: a dense mythology and intricate fantasy worldbuilding exercise with glowing trees, prized jewels, kaiju, angelic conflict, the fall of civilizations, a lot of disgruntlement over pressing issues like immortality, and a kind of unspecific, vague form of evil embodied in shrouded, mysterious supernatural characters.

House of the Dragon

-HBO (Discovery+, HBO, HBOMax have combined subscription of <100 million)
-Fun fact, Warner/Discovery which owns HBO has $53 billion in debt and is undergoing a major restructuring. Much may be riding on the success of this show
-10 episode first season
-Premiere: Sunday, 8/21 with one episode/week
"nearly 10 million" viewers for the premiere, an HBO record
-Cost per episode: $20 million
-Based on: The wildly successful Game of Thrones series, the George R.R. Martin books those were based on, and specifically Fire & Blood, published in 2018. It has some superficial similarity to the Silmarillion in that it's a **** ton of backstory to the good stuff. In the future,
-Audience: HBO/HBOMax subscribers, Game of Thrones fans, Martin fans, Fire & Blood fans.
-Description. Palace intrigue, incest, dragons, gory violence, and debauchery. Evil in the form of people doing questionable things for reasons they feel are justified.

Will they both be wildly successful? Will House of the Dragon come close to the success of Game of Thrones? Is watching Tolkien's Middle Earth backstory entertainment or more like assigned reading? same question about House of the Dragon.

 

All I know is that Wocky will annoy fans of both.

 

cue something about eagles.

 

The key difference for me is, I'll watch RoP and I won't watch HoD.

 

I don't have the willpower to not watch both these shows, but I'm glad someone is picking sides.

 

Same for me. I'm more interested in LOTR, but the main reason is that we don't have HBO / HBO Max anymore.

 

I hope they're so similar that it confuses general audiences.

 

I put on my robe and wizard hat…

 

@godisawesome postulated in another, lesser thread that the source of Game of Throne's staying power and popularity was the palace intrigue. That seems like a pretty novel take to me. I'd say the source of Game of Thrones popularity was to deliver episodes that people wanted to talk about afterwards, and doing it consistently until talking about GOT episodes became a major pop culture reference point, which drove more people to watch it so they could talk about it afterward. And the palace intrigue really had very little to do with that. I didn't start watching until maybe season 4, when I seriously began to feel I was missing out culturally.

That would be a lot to ask for the new show to have that kind of pop culture intensity. Many people just want to watch a solid show. But the kind of money that was spent means that unless it comes close to the pop culture iconography of the original series, it won't be able to justify its expense. What kind of audience is needed to avoid shaking the foundations of Warner Bros/Discovery to the brink of collapse. That's the real question.

Rings of Power is an expensive gamble, but Bezos's net worth isn't really riding on the outcome.

 

Why didn’t they just have the giant eagles fight the dragons?

 

I'm looking forward to both shows and hope they do well...

But if you're going to pit these two shows against each other, however you decide to measure it, Hot D is gong to curb stomp Rings of Power.

 

I need some of that Hot D at least once a week. So far, twice this week alone.

 

Hot D curb stomp is phrase of the week.

 

more like Rings in Power

you know... like... RIP, you know?

 

+2 Rhaenyra Targaryen

 

Why not both.

 

Eagly could still save HBOMax even if Hot D can't do it.

 

Of course that then opens up the whole “Why didn’t the eagles stop Ezra Miller?” can of worms.

 

Whoops, wrong costume.

 

Could Princes Rhaenyra take The One Ring to Mordor on one of her dragons?

 

Will more characters have the first name Mace?

 

Probably not super advisable to trust a creature of Morgoth with the One Ring but she definitely could. It wouldn’t end well but she could do it.

 

Rings of Power for me, I don’t expect it to be great and I’m not thrilled that the franchise is in the hands of Amazon, but I like some of what the trailers show and I generally like the world and stories from Tolkien and so am always curious about new adaptations or inspirations from his works

just never got into Game of Thrones, never read the books or anything

 

I'm not watching either, but if I had to choose, it would be Rings of Power; much more familiar with LOTR mythos.