Rumor: Amazon to retool 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,' sideline current showrunners

Film critic and Film Threat founder Chris Gore claimed on the October 25, 2022 episode of the YouTube livestream "Midnight's Edge in the Morning" that Amazon planned to "retool" "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" for its second season, according to coverage from The Mix.

Gore said showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay would likely not be publicly fired but would see their roles diminished — "potentially just remaining in the writers room" — while Amazon sought "more experienced showrunners," per The Mix's account of the livestream. Gore was reported as saying: "what they're doing behind the scenes is they're freaking out that this was more of a failure than could have been anticipated."

The Mix characterized the claim as unverified speculation attributed to industry contacts Gore said he had, not a confirmed report or an Amazon statement. The retrieved coverage does not identify those contacts by name or describe any corroboration from a second source.

The reasoning behind the claim

Gore attributed the alleged shakeup to three factors, per The Mix: the show's reception, which he described as "sleep inducing"; a rejection from fans; and competition from HBO's "House of the Dragon," which premiered in the same window. The coverage cited a Metacritic user score of 2.5 out of 10 from 2,422 reviews and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 39% "Rotten" from 35,548 reviews, alongside a claim that critic scores were inflated due to alleged review moderation by Amazon.

What remained unconfirmed

Neither Amazon nor Payne and McKay were reported as having commented on Gore's claim in the coverage retrieved this session. The report does not establish whether any personnel change to the showrunners actually occurred for subsequent seasons.

What it signals

The rumor circulated at a moment when "Rings of Power" was drawing a sharp split between its critic scores and its audience scores, and its spread illustrates how quickly single-source claims from entertainment commentators can be repeated as news even when explicitly labeled unverified.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by The Mix. It restores a story originally published on this site in October 2022; figures are as reported at the time and this remains an unconfirmed rumor, not established fact.