The most expensive series ever made: it’s available on Amazon Prime

Amazon’s highly anticipated big-budget prequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, is finally here. It’s the most expensive series ever made.

After nearly 10 million people watched HBO’s long-awaited series premiere, House of the Dragon, Amazon scores with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The plan was for Amazon to release the first two episodes in a simultaneous release on its Prime Video streaming platform, a fairly common practice.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, on Amazon Prime

But the streamer’s execution was a bit unorthodox, to say the least. At the start of the double release, episode one was – for some users – literally unwatchable. That’s no exaggeration, as it was completely missing a play button, and instead users were given a message saying “the video is currently unavailable”. In the meantime, episode two has been made widely available.

Fortunately, it seems that this bug didn’t affect everyone and was fixed within minutes. Whether this can be blamed on a server overload from the millions who wanted to watch the premiere at the same time, or an intern who forgot to press a button. But from one of the world’s most prominent tech companies and at a crucial time in its ongoing venture into streaming entertainment, it’s a pretty embarrassing slip-up, either way.

With Amazon paying $465 million for the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it’s apparently the most expensive series ever made. And that huge budget doesn’t even include the $250 million Amazon had to pay for the rights to the Tolkien property in 2017.

Obviously, expectations are high. It’s an incredibly high expectation to surpass Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, which was one of the most critically, commercially and culturally successful entertainment projects of all time.