Prime Video announced it will be eliminating “several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization” following the expensive and disastrous first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Joseph Mawle as Adar in The Lord of the Ring: The Rings of Power
Senior Vice President Mike Hopkins informed employees in an email obtained by Deadline informing them, “we will be eliminating several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization.”
Hopkins added, “Today, we will begin to reach out to colleagues who are impacted by these role reductions. Notifications will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the Americas to be completed this morning (Pacific time), and most other regions by the end of the week.”
Furthermore he added, “This is a difficult decision to make and one that my leadership team and I do not take lightly. It is hard to say goodbye to talented Amazonians who’ve made meaningful contributions on behalf of our customers, team and business. Thank you for your dedication and work. To help with the transition, we are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional benefits as applicable by country, and external job placement support.”
Charlie Vickers as Sauron entering Mordor in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
READ: Here We Go Again: Lord of the Rings “Rings of Power” Bashes Fans
This announcement comes after it was reported that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had a reported budget of $1 billion.
Prime Video seemingly did not get any of that money back as a report in April 2023 from The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters indicated that only 37% of viewers completed the series meaning a whopping 63% watched some of it and then turned it off and did not look back.
Masters reported, “While Amazon, like other streamers, provides only limited data — and internally, it held information even more closely than usual on the series — sources confirm that The Rings of Power had a 37 percent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series).”
She added, “Overseas, it reached 45 percent. (A 50 percent completion rate would be a solid but not spectacular result, according to insiders).”
Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor and Robert Aramayo as Elrond in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022), Prime Video
Not only did The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power see terrible completion rate, it’s viewership did not shatter any records.
Nielsen reported that the series debuted with 1.253 billion minutes viewed in North America. That included the first two episodes as Prime Video released them together on September 1, 2022.
That would be as high as the show would go. It would trend downward from there week after week. In its second week it declined to 1.203 billion. By week three it was down to 988 million minutes viewed. In week four it fell to 977 million minutes. Week five saw it drop to 966 million minutes.
It did see a bump when the season finale was released. It jumped to 1.137 billion with viewers likely binging the entire series. However, the week following its finale, it saw viewership minutes drop to 570 million. In the subsequent week, it fell of Nielsen’s charts with viewership below 354 million.
Morfydd Clark as Galadriel and Charlie Vickers as Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022), Prime Video
READ: Amid Streaming Viewership and Ratings Reporting CHAOS, Rings of Power Loses
The series received an atrocious Rotten Tomatoes score of 38% from audiences. The average rating was 2.4 out of 5.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Rotten Tomatoes score
On IMDb it has a middling rating of 7.0.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power IMDb score
The layoffs also come after a report from Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw in July that detailed Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was looking into the costs of various shows.
Shaw stated, “Jassy is now trying to get a better handle on why specific shows cost what they do, based on conversations with more than a dozen different people who either work at Amazon or have worked with the company on projects.”
Joseph Mawle as Adar in The Lord of the Ring: The Rings of Power (2022), Prime Video
What do you make of Prime Video announcing significant layoffs in its film and TV divisions?
You DO have to give Amazon credit that it only took ONE huge, bloated, and bad streaming thingie flopping to get them to take radical,immediate steps and basically admit their mistake. A certain Mouse recidivist priceyflopmaker hasn’t learned that lesson yet.
Of course a great show is a problem…
I watched the 1st season and really liked it! I liked it better than the 1st season of Wheel of Time! There should have been more of an effort to promote it to LOTR fans!
It’s almost as if being racist/sexist scum, pissing all over the source material, then going to war with audiences for not liking it all… isn’t good for business. Who would have ever imagined that, right?
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