Wonder Woman 1984, which was on Christmas Day at the same time as the cinema on the HBO Max debut, was at the top of Nielsen’s updated US streaming chart for the week of December 21-27.
Nielsen did not officially begin measuring WarnerMedia’s streaming service, but he reviewed last week’s regular rankings and said WW84 piled up 2.252 billion minutes of power. It was 35% better than that of Pixar Soul, which took almost 1.7 billion minutes on Disney +. It was also 85% higher than red hot Bridgerton, which anointed Netflix this week as its most original program.
Duration should not be reduced as a factor. WW84 is 2 hours 35 minutes, more than 45 minutes longer than Soul.
On the revised chart, five of the top ten weekly entries were feature films, reflecting the direction of content distribution, as Covid-19 keeps movie theaters in LA, New York and many other markets closed. WarnerMedia plans to release the entire 2021 Warner Bros. slate on HBO Max in parallel with theaters. Determining what the big streaming start means exactly for the economic performance of the film is an almost impossible task. It’s nearly $ 150 million in the global box office, but has declined rapidly, not surprisingly, given the numerous areas still plagued by Covid outbreaks.
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AT&T, a parent of WarnerMedia, said earlier this week that HBO Max activation doubled to 17.2 million in the fourth quarter, an increase that was partly due to the release of WW84. The company did not release any of its own viewer data about the film.
In a statement from Nielsen, HBO Max EVP and GM Andy Forssell called the release “a great holiday gift to the consumer at a time when they wanted and needed it.”
Nielsen’s rankings only follow stream through a TV set, excluding mobile streams, and data is released after a long delay, according to arrangements with the services being measured. HBO Max is only currently operating in the US, but it will expand to Latin America and parts of Europe later this year. Nielsen has so far only measured Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney +, but the company has indicated that it will soon officially add HBO Max and Peacock of NBCUniversal to its regular spin.
Here is the revised US weekly Nielsen flow chart:
Wonder Woman 1984 (HBO Max, movie, 2.3B total minutes)
Soul (Disney +, movie, 1.7B min.)
The office (Netflix, 192 episodes, 1.4B min.)
Bridgerton (Netflix, 8 eps., 1.2B min.)
The Midnight Sky (Netflix, movies, 1.1B min.)
The Mandalorian (Disney +, 16 eps., 1B min.)
How the Grinch stole Xmas (Netflix, movies, 705M min.)
The crown (40 eps., 700 million min.)
Grey’s Anatomy (Netflix, 366 eps., 691M min.)
Christmas Chronicles 2 (Netflix, movies, 660 million min.)