As production on Season 2 gets started, Prime Video's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunner Patrick McKay promises fans it'll be better than Season 1.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, McKay teased that the new season, which started filming on Oct. 3, will be "bigger and better" on "every level... by an order of magnitude." Season 2 of The Rings of Power is currently filming in Bray Studios outside of London, switching things up from Season 1's New Zealand location. This will likely lower production costs from what they were on Season 1 of the LOTR prequel, which cost nearly half a billion dollars to make.
The hefty cost of Season 1 of The Rings of Power was a significant risk on Amazon's part -- one that didn't pay off immediately. After the first episode premiered on Sept. 1, the show faced major review-bombing from viewers who believed that it was too slow and strayed too far from the Lord of the Rings book series. The initial reception was so negative, in fact, that Amazon decided to halt reviews of the show for 72 hours to ensure that they were legitimate and weren't just intentional review-bombing.
Middle-earth Will Never Be the Same
The Rings of Power has since picked up the pace, as far as audience response is concerned, and seen an impressive number of streams. Since its premiere, the show has seen a whopping 1.25 billion minutes watched, beating out its competitor, HBO's Game of Thrones spinoff, House of the Dragon, which only racked up 781 million minutes watched.
The impressive streaming numbers might have something to do with the fact that the show has ramped up the action in its last couple of episodes. Episode 6, "Udûn," saw a major horseback battle scene featuring Morfydd Clark's Galadriel. What makes the scene even more impressive is that the stunts weren't CGI. Clark praised her stunt double, saying, "I can’t believe that was possible. Before doing this, I thought so much of horse stunts were CGI, but it wasn't."
Galadriel wasn't the only character with a major action scene in "Udûn." Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays Arondir, had an epic fight scene with an oversized orc warrior. He revealed that the effects in that scene were practical, too -- the orc's blood was made out of a mixture of chocolate, gelatin, and food coloring.
Episodes 1 through 6 of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. New episodes premiere Fridays.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter