Nielsen has made a one-time exception to include HBO Max in its SVOD measurement service at the bidding of the streamer. Nielsen previously released its list of top-streamed content for the week of Christmas with Pixar’s Soul on Disney+ in the No. 1 spot with 1,669 million minutes of viewing time.
But HBO Max wasn’t going to let WW84 go unnoticed without a fight. Not wanting to get left behind on one of its biggest releases, the streamer called on Nielsen for a video review of the Gal Gadot would-be blockbuster. Nielsen agreed to work with HBO Max and found WW84 pulled in nearly 2.3 billion viewing minutes among U.S. viewers, about 35% more than Soul. Both films premiered on Christmas Day.
With a run-time of 151 minutes, WW84 is estimated to have been viewed about 14.9 million times (if it was watched in its entirety).
This news doesn’t seem too surprising that a live-action film with a powerhouse franchise behind it would perform better than an animated Pixar film. While Pixar movies generally do fairly well at the box office, it’s nothing in comparison to the reach DC or Marvel films extend to. Plus being a sequel, fans were hungry for more after waiting 3 years since the first Wonder Woman film was released in 2017. It’s not uncommon for second installments to out-perform the originals, like Season 2 of The Mandalorian on Disney+ getting more viewership in the first few weeks of release than its first season.
As Nielsen’s streaming charts are relatively new, the ratings only include data on Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix. However, Nielsen plans to continue adding other platforms soon including HBO Max and Peacock
A Nielsen rep said the HBO Max measurement is “a one-time view as we work toward introducing the data externally.”