House of the Dragon Showrunner Comments on Rings of Power Rivalry

It's a good time to be a fan of fantasy in terms of television with both HBO's Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon and Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power both airing but while there has been plenty of conversation about which show is better or if the popularity of one is harming the popularity of the other, but for House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, there's no rivalry between the two series. Condal explained to The Wrap that, from his perspective is that more science-fiction/fantasy on television is a good thing — and he's a big Tolkien fan himself.

"I read Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and The Hobbit multiple times growing up, I saw the Peter Jackson movies multiple times in the theaters," Condal said. "I love all that stuff, I love high fantasy, and frankly I want to live in a world where there's room for all of these things to exist if they're good. I think the need for more well-mad expensive science-fiction/fantasy on television is what all of us nerds want."

Condal also said that he doesn't think the two shows represent a one or the other rivalry. Condal says that he thinks that the two shows "feed" each other.

"I don't think that somebody watching Rings of Power means they're not watching House of the Dragon, I don't see it that way," Condal said. "I see one feeds the other, and I think the more good quality genre entertainment on television, the more it's gonna draw in the general public who might not be so predisposed to watching this."

Of course, there's also the matter of the two shows, despite being of the same genre, being very different — meaning that they have different appeal. Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke has previously said that Rings of Power will never be like Game of Thrones and shouldn't try to be.

"There's so much darkness in the world. Leaning into light was the other thing that was really appealing to everybody – bringing something to our global customer base that is hopeful and has light and that a family can watch," Salke explained to Variety. 

She added, "So many people have grown up with this literature, and we wanted this series to pay it forward for new generations of Tolkien lovers. The line we've been using is 'If you're old enough to read the books, you're old enough to watch the show.' We knew from the beginning this was not our Game of Thrones."

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