‘Rings of Power’ Drops, ‘Perfect Couple’ Leads Luminate Ratings

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Season 2 suffered a major viewership drop in its second week on Luminate’s weekly streaming originals chart.

Last week, the Amazon Prime Video series managed to nab second place with 764.7 million minutes watched in the first full week of availability of its first three episodes combined with the first day of availability of its fourth episode. But during the Sept. 6-12 viewing window — which included the first full week of Episode 4 and the first day of Episode 5 — it only hit 372.7 million minutes watched, landing in fourth place. While there was less new content to watch compared to the week before, when the first three episodes has just debuted, it still doesn’t bode well for a large IP title to drop by more than 50% after one week, when word-of-mouth appeal should still be high. It should be noted that Luminate only measures U.S. viewership and that Amazon emphasized earlier this week that much of the series’ fans watch from other territories — however, the studio did not provide data to support that claim.

By far, the top title of the week was “The Perfect Couple,” which boomed in its first week of availability, hitting 3.4 billion minutes watched. The Netflix series is the first to cross 3 billion minutes on Luminate’s chart since the release of “Bridgerton” Season 2 Part 2 in June.

At No. 2 was “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” which debuted with 781.1 million minutes watched in its first week on Hulu. It was followed by another unscripted title, Season 8 of “Selling Sunset,” which debuted with 586.7 million minutes watched.

Following “Rings of Power” were “Outlast” Season 2 (317 million), “Worst Ex Ever” (310.7 million) and “Kaos” (307.9 million), while the bottom three titles on the chart — “The Accident,” “Bad Monkey” and “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” — each came in below 300 million minutes watched.

On the movies chart, “Rebel Ridge” debuted on top with 1.5 billion minutes watched in its first week on Netflix. “The Deliverance,” last week’s No. 1 film, followed with 309.8 million minutes, while “The Union” took third place in its fourth week on Netflix with 149 million minutes watched.

The rest of the chart positions went to titles with less than one million minutes watched: “Apollo 12: Survival,” “The Killer,” “The Assistant 2” (a rare chart appearance for Tubi), “Jackpot!,” “Incoming,” “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” and “The Instigators.”

(Disclosure: Luminate and Variety share a common owner in Penske Media Corp.)