Here’s what’s at stake for HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ and Amazon’s ‘The Rings of Power’

As summer time involves an finish, two costly fantasy collection stuffed with sorcery, sword fights and fantastical beasts will premiere on rival streaming providers.

While it could seem to be Amazon Prime Video’s “The Rings of Power” and Warner Bros. Discovery’s “House of the Dragon” needs to be dueling franchises, as they start inside a pair weeks of one another, the two collection serve very totally different functions for their respective studios.

The stakes could also be greater for “House of the Dragon,” which is able to go first. It begins Sunday on HBO and streaming service HBO Max, arriving as newly minted CEO David Zaslav is wanting for fats to trim.

Cost-cutting measures have turn into establishment at the not too long ago merged firm together with layoffs and content material eliminations from HBO Max. As Warner Bros. Discovery seeks to economize, it is also seeking to consolidate its streaming providers, one thing that might be costly and time-consuming.

“House of the Dragon” tells the story of the Targaryen civil battle that befell about 200 years earlier than the occasions portrayed in “Game of Thrones.” It relies on George R.R. Martin’s novel “Fire and Blood.” Unlike Martin’s different books in the “Song of Ice and Fire” collection, this one options an omniscient narrator who paperwork the histories based mostly on collected accounts of occasions. In some instances, these tales contradict one another and there are a number of variations of occasions.

Amazon Prime Video’s “The Rings of Power” arrives Sept. 2. The collection relies on materials in the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s monumental “The Lord of the Rings” novels. “The Rings of Power” focuses on the main occasions of Middle-earth’s second age, a time of peace that’s disrupted by the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron. It takes place hundreds of years earlier than the begin of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” which filmmaker Peter Jackson become separate blockbuster trilogies earlier this century.

While each collection have mature themes, Martin’s work is extra focused at adults, because it portrays visceral acts of violence, nudity and sexual assault. While there are massive battles in “The Lord of the Rings,” earlier iterations have been extra appropriate for youthful audiences.

Both collection will drop new episodes weekly, a technique that might flip them into must-watch occasion TV and hold audiences speaking and speculating about what’s to return.

For Warner Bros. Discovery, the second entrant in its Game of Thrones franchise has rather a lot to show, and to stay as much as. The closing season of “Game of Thrones” left a bitter style in lots of followers’ mouths, as showrunners wrote past the occasions in the materials created by writer Martin, who has but to complete the story in his books.

“There was this, this type of cloud that descended on the authentic [‘Game of Thrones,’]” stated Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University and a popular culture skilled. “Not all people despised it, however actually there was rather a lot of the reverse of love. To some extent as we go into all of these, you recognize, subsequent chapters in the ‘Game of Thrones’ tv world, there’s already that sense of a sort of compromise.”

At the time, HBO was owned by AT&T. Now, Discovery has merged with Warner Bros. and new house owners have a brand new streaming technique. As the firm quietly pulls exhibits and movies from HBO Max, and has shelved already made projects, analysts and buyers see an unsure future.

If “House of the Dragon,” which price a reported $15 million to $20 million per episode, does not stay as much as expectations, the subsequent section of the Game of Thrones franchise might fizzle out shortly.

“I really feel like they’ve extra to show in the market,” stated Dan Rayburn, a streaming and media analyst. “Amazon, they don’t seem to be attempting to impress buyers and when they’re, it is round commerce.”

Of course, the reverse can also be true. If the “Game of Thrones” prequel is a essential hit, Warner Bros. Discovery might see this fledgling franchise turn into a way more substantial half of the popular culture zeitgeist.

“House of the Dragon” holds a 78% “Fresh” ranking on Rotten Tomatoes from 177 critiques. For comparability, the first season of “Game of Thrones” launched in 2011 had a 90% “Fresh” ranking. In reality, each season besides the closing season had a rating above 90%. Season eight generated a 55% ranking.

No ranking has been assigned to “The Rings of Power,” but. The three authentic “Lord of the Rings” movies every scored between 91% and 95%, whereas the “Hobbit” trilogy generated scores between 59% and 74% from critics.

Unlike conventional standalone streaming providers, like HBO Max, Netflix, Disney+ or Peacock, Amazon is much less beholden than subscriber metrics. The motion pictures, tv collection and documentaries it provides are a supplemental add-on to its e-commerce web site and its cloud computing enterprise.

“The longer you spend watching one thing on Amazon, the higher likelihood [you’re] going to purchase shampoo, toothpaste, a garden mower, you recognize, and that is in the end their enterprise,” stated Paul Hardart, director of the leisure, media and expertise program at NYU Stern School of Business. “And so they have a number of methods to generate income off of you.”

Amazon’s technique in recent times has been to deal with content material that has a passionate built-in viewers and will add worth to its platform. In addition to snatching up the rights to Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” supplemental materials in 2017 for an estimated $250 million, the firm not too long ago purchased MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, giving it entry to James Bond, the Rocky franchise and “The Silence of the Lambs.” 

It additionally partnered with Dungeons and Dragons media group Critical Role to create an animated collection based mostly on one of the group’s campaigns, and has created its personal collection based mostly on “A League of Their Own,” one based mostly on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels and one other on Tom Clancy’s character Jack Ryan.

Amazon has a five-season plan for “The Rings of Power,” a plan that will swallow more than $1 billion in production costs and might take almost a decade to finish. With this funding, it’s unlikely that the firm will deviate from the collection, even when viewership is smaller-than-expected.

Of course, analysts and buyers will seemingly by no means get viewership knowledge from Amazon, stated Rayburn. The firm has at all times been quiet about its streaming numbers, doling out occasional figures for massive movies or collection, however has not translated these numbers into income figures.

“We’re by no means going to know if the Amazon collection is profitable,” he stated. “They won’t ever come out and give us metrics which might be tied to income.”

Warner Bros. Discovery, on the different hand, might also hold income knowledge quiet, however could also be extra prepared to concede viewership knowledge, he stated. The firm may also “haven’t any selection” however to cancel the present if it does not carry out effectively, “particularly with the [recent] pullback of content material spend,” Rayburn stated.

Of course, the followers might be the closing metric. Even although followers criticized the closing season of “Game of Thrones,” the collection as an entire remains to be beloved and its rankings had been persistently HBO’s highest throughout the time of its run.

“The Rings of Power” additionally has an enormous baked-in viewers. The six theatrical movies tied to Tolkien’s novels generated greater than $5.8 billion at the international field workplace, and Amazon – which made its identify as a bookseller, in spite of everything – noticed a resurgence in curiosity in the writer’s texts earlier this yr. Even “The Silmarillion,” Tolkien’s esoteric, posthumously revealed mythos of Middle-earth, reached Amazon’s prime chart for the first time ever, signaling a surge in curiosity forward of the collection.

If audiences rally behind these exhibits, whether or not critics like them or not, then each firms will look for methods to broaden their respective universes and present extra content material, and merchandise, in the future.

It is also excellent news for different streaming providers dabbling in fantasy. Disney+ will premiere its “Willow” collection, a sequel to the 1988 sword-and-sorcery Ron Howard film, at the finish of November.

Disclosure: Comcast is the father or mother firm of NBCUniversal and CNBC. Peacock and Rotten Tomatoes is owned by NBCUniversal.