Los Angeles, Jan 27 :There is no fellowship this time, no men, no elves, dwarfs, hobbits, orcs or globins shown — not even a few crumbs of lembas bread but Amazon’s teaser video has rack up an estimated social reach of 1 billion impressions, the studio claims. Trending since its January 19 release, the teaser has been a huge success in markets worldwide on Twitter and YouTube. released on Jan. 19 revealing the mere title of its upcoming “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” TV series managed to “To already see this much enthusiasm for the series is incredible and gets us even more excited for what we’ll be sharing with fans in the near future,” says Ukonwa Ojo, global CMO of Prime Video and Amazon Studios. “Three for the elven kings, under the sky. Seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone. Nine for Mortal men doomed to die. One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne. In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.” The “The Rings of Power”, is set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, thousands of years before the events of LOTR and would focus on the forging of the rings of power including the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the land of Mordor which resulted in the journey of Frodo Baggins to Mordor to destroy the ring in Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic Oscar-winning trilogy of films that grossed $2.97 billion. But to the industry, the impact made by the project’s mere name seemed to confirm what prior news tidbits from Amazon’s massive multi-season gamble had only hinted at: That LOTR could be, indeed, the one fantasy show to rule them all — even as it will be released during a year shaping up to be the most crowded ever in the fantasy genre space. This surge of popularity in the fantasy genre post LOTR movies is of course a result of the popularity of Game of Thrones (and there’s some irony to the fact that author George R.R. Martin wrote his A Song of Ice and Fire books to be a grounded, R-rated response to J.R.R. Tolkien, and then Amazon revived Tolkien in reaction to HBO’s success with GoT). The GoT brand returns this year as well, with HBO Max’s high-stakes prequel series “House of the Dragon”, which will likely debut in the latter half of the year. Given that LOTR arrives September 2, there’s a possibility of witnessing a real-time GoT vs. LOTR for genre dominance that would surely rival “The Battle of Helms Deep” and the “Battle of Pelennor Fields”. Also another top contender for a popular fantasy TV show is Netflix’s “The Witcher” prequel, “Blood Origin”. With Amazon investing a whopping $465 million in LOTR’s first season alone, “The Rings of Power” will be the most expensive TV show ever, with the bar for its success only being that much higher — likely more than is possible for any series to clear in its first couple of seasons. Still, according to the recent statistics it can be ascertained, that fans are eager to dive back into Middle-earth, and the question has shifted to whether “The Rings of Power” will entice them to stay and live up to the legendary trilogy. (UNI)