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The Guide #22: is Amazon’s Lord of the Rings adaptation the one show to rile them all?
In this week’s newsletter: we’re used to online revolts by now, but fans objecting to the Rings of Power’s very existence is something unprecedented
Don’t get the Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up to get the full article hereOne of the most eye-catching moments of this year’s Super Bowl – alongside the all-time classic half-time show and cutaway shots to the mind-bogglingly massive, intestine-shaped “infinity screen” pulsing away at LA’s SoFi Stadium – was the first glimpse of Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series. You may be aware of it, given it has been five years in the making and its first season cost a shade under the GDP of Tonga. Those who aren’t will surely be very soon, thanks to an exhaustive marketing blitz that will whirr for the next seven months until the show’s release.
The teaser trailer that launched at the Super Bowl was designed to be the centrepiece of this marketing campaign; a place in the most highly coveted advertising window on the planet, beamed into over 100m households in the US, as well as the rest of (Middle) Earth via YouTube. In terms of attracting eyeballs, Amazon’s gambit was a success: 257m people around the world watched the teaser in the first 24 hours after its release.
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