Only 37% of viewers finished Amazon's extremely expensive Lord of the Rings series

According to a new report, less than half of the people who started watching The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime's Lord of the Rings show, actually made it to the end.

In the competitive world of streaming services which are all fighting for your hard-earned time and money, one of the main draws is having a big show that will bring in new subscribers and keep existing ones hooked.

Certain shows can come from original ideas and go on to build their own core of dedicated fans, while others take an incredibly popular property and adapt it to the TV screen.

And that's what Amazon Prime did with The Rings of Power, their Lord of the Rings series based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and they have been keen not to 'f**k up' what could be one of the biggest shows on TV.

Amazon is willing to fork over a lot of money to make The Rings of Power, with it reputed to be the most expensive show ever made on TV and a plan for five whole seasons, which is quite the ambitious plan.

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However, a big name and big budget hasn't translated into it becoming the biggest show in streaming, or even on Prime Video, at least not yet.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Rings of Power was the 15th most popular streaming show of 2022, with Netflix still dominating the top 10 and Prime's own The Boys clinching 11th spot.

That's still pretty big and with several more seasons in the pipeline, there's a chance for The Rings of Power to grow a bigger audience, but among those who did tune in, the amount that stuck around is worrying.

When it comes to 'completion rate', the number of viewers who started watching a show and made it to the final episode, The Hollywood Reporter says Amazon's big-budget fantasy show has been struggling.

The Rings of Power achieved a completion rate of just 37 percent among US audiences, while worldwide it did a bit better with 45 percent.

That's still more than half of viewers switching off before the end of the run and not picking the show up again.

Prime Video

This looks like pretty bad news, as if you're planning to run an incredibly expensive show for five seasons then you'd hope some people would still be watching by the end.

Other streaming services like to keep a close eye on this metric, and it may be one of the main reasons why Netflix keeps cancelling shows, as ones which don't have at least a 50 percent completion rate have tended to get the axe.

The Rings of Power has faced criticism for being 'too slow' and it's been subjected to 'review bombing' from viewers, some of whom didn't like the show while others had far less legitimate complaints.

The show also hasn't been raking in a shedload of awards either, but Amazon bosses are seemingly not concerned about this and still see The Rings of Power as a major success.

Amazon Studios boss Jennifer Salke said that a 'desire to paint the show as anything less than a success' had not been 'reflective of any conversation I’m having internally', so it seems as though Amazon are pretty happy with the way things are going.

The second season of the show is currently in production and Salke believes it will be a 'huge opportunity' for The Rings of Power to really spread its wings and fly as the first season 'required a lot of setting up'.

UNILAD has reached out to Amazon Prime for comment.