Following the major announcement this week that HBO Max is being rebranded as Max, new advertisements have rolled out for the service–and one of them seemingly pokes fun at Amazon Studios and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
The advertisement in question-see it at The Hollywood Reporter–shows Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen sitting on the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones, with text below that states, “The one to watch when you want to rule them all.” The ad could be understood as a reference to Game of Thrones, as Daenerys certainly had ambitions to “rule them all” in the TV series. But it can also be taken as a dig at Amazon Studios and its own fantasy series, The Rings of Power. Fans of the Middle-earth series know that one of the franchise’s most iconic lines is “One Ring to rule them all.”
Or perhaps the new Max ad is trying to promote Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings at the same time. After all, all of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films are streaming on HBO Max/Max. The Hollywood Reporter speculates that WB Discovery might have rolled out this ad specifically to generate news stories and memes that, in the end, help elevate Max by putting it in front of more eyeballs.