Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power television series set a new Super Bowl viewership record within the first 24 hours of premiering online. Amazon announced that the minute-long teaser racked up a whopping 257 million views online from across the world, the highest number of any entertainment trailer (movie, television, or streaming) that has ever premiered during a telecast of the Super Bowl.
Watch the trailer here:
Ukonwa Ojo, chief marketing officer of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, released a statement: “The response to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been immense.In introducing the upcoming series to viewers, our goal has been to ensure we are positioned at the epicenter of pop culture while remaining true to the Tolkien universe. It’s been incredible to see the amazing reaction to each marketing beat that we unveiled over the past month."
Set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Rings of Power's story follows the rise of Sauron, the Dark Lord who manipulates the beings of Middle-Earth to hatch plans to sow chaos and bend the world to his will.
"By inviting audiences to slowly get familiar with this exciting new chapter in the franchise, we have seen their excitement and insatiable appetite for more build at a feverish pace," Ujo went on. "The Super Bowl was always designed as the ultimate payoff for fans; a teaser of this magnitude deserved to be debuted during the biggest annual television and sports event of the year. This record-breaking achievement belongs to our fans, and we look forward to continuing to take them on an incredible journey leading up to the fall debut."
The Rings of Power is not the only project The Lord of the Rings fans should look forward to. Warner Bros. is currently developing an anime-inspired feature film The War of the Rohirrim, which is slated for a theatrical release in April 2024. The film is set two centuries before the events of The Hobbit, and will explore the creation of Helm's Deep. It will be directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus), and Philippa Boyends, a co-writer of Peter Jackson's LOTR movie trilogy, will executive produce. A voice cast for the film has yet to be finalized.
Related: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Showrunner Calls the Show the 'Novel Tolkien Never Wrote'
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to release exclusively on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, September 2, 2022. You can read more details about the upcoming show here.
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