Viewer Interest in 'House of the Dragon' vs. 'The Rings of Power'

“The Lord of the Rings” and “Game of Thrones” have captivated readers and viewers for years, becoming global pop-culture phenomena largely beloved by critics and fans. Now, they’re about to go head to head, with ambitious prequel TV series set to overlap on Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO, respectively, over the next few weeks. 

Both companies need the shows to catch on with audiences. Amazon reportedly spent a historically high $1 billion on “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” a series set thousands of years before the events of Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning films. HBO, meanwhile, spent under $20 million to make each episode of “House of the Dragon,” which premieres Sunday and is but one of more than a half dozen “Thrones” spinoffs in the works at the network.

New data from Morning Consult reveals that while U.S. viewers are slightly more interested in the more familiar intellectual property, “The Rings of Power,” than “House of the Dragon,” both companies should feel encouraged by the broad interest the series are attracting ahead of their premieres.

A rising tide of fantasy lifts all series

This week, Amazon revealed the episode release schedule for “The Rings of Power,” with the first two episodes debuting Sept. 2 before switching to an episode-per-week cadence for the remainder of the eight-episode season. The decision to release back-to-back episodes in the series' first week means Amazon will avoid a head-to-head finale matchup with “House of the Dragon” in October. The team behind the show recently said it doesn’t see a rivalry with HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” despite the internet thinking otherwise. 

While Morning Consult data shows the public may be slightly more interested in “The Rings of Power” than “House of the Dragon,” there is plenty of room for both series to succeed. Or, as “The Rings of Power” star Robert Aramayo recently put it, more fantasy shows “can never be a bad thing.”

The Aug. 13-14, 2022, survey was conducted among a representative sample of roughly 2,210 U.S. adults, with an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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