Friday, March 19, brought viewers the first episode of Marvel’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” to Disney+ and it performed very well. The premier beat out streaming numbers for both the premiers of “WandaVision” and “The Mandalorian Season 2” but it did not outperform DC’s “Justice League” Snyder Cut or “Wonder Woman 1984.”
The Numbers
According to Samba TV the Disney+ premiere of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” came in at 1.7 million households, making it the most watched series premiere on Disney+ during it’s opening weekend. This number apparently counts anyone who tuned in for 5 minutes, which seems like that isn’t actually watching a show, but that’s the numbers they go by.
The 1.7 million number was enough to beat the ‘WandaVision” 1.6 million opening weekend number.
It’s noteworthy to mention that those numbers were for the entire opening weekend. When it comes to the premiere date (Friday) the data shuffles a bit.
Deadline reports that there 759k US households tuned into the latest Marvel show’s Friday debut as compared to the 655k households that tuned into the “WandaVision” Friday debut. But The Mandalorian Season 2 Friday debut still won with 1 million US households tuning in.
So it’s a “pick and choose” the way it’s presented type deal. You could shift the narrative by which data you choose to go by.
But there is still a bigger issue here and that is that Marvel is underperforming in comparison to DC, at least in streaming numbers.
Both “WandaVision” (with 1.6 million) and “The Falcon and The Winder Soldier” (with 1.7 million) premiere weekends came in behind “The Justice League” Snyder Cut (with 1.8 million) and “Wonder Woman 1984” (with 2.2 million.)
One could argue that “Wonder Woman 1984” and “The Justice League” were tent pole films and that’s true. However “The Justice League” broke down the movie into chapters that could be consumed in the same way a show like “WandaVision” could be watched for similar watch times and accessibility.
If we are being fair it’s also important to note that we don’t have a comparison of the data on the viewership of the entire series of both “The Mandalorian Season 2” and “WandaVision” that could be compared to a similar time frame with the “Wonder Woman 1984” numbers in this data set.
But it’s interesting to see that DC is catching up to Marvel, and even beating them with streaming premieres. It’s also worth noting HBO Max is relatively new just like Disney+ but HBO Max has far fewer subscribers than Disney+ yet still had more engagement.
This is something to watch and compare moving forward.
Of course the real winners are the fans who keep getting all kinds of fantastic films and shows to watch. For that I’m not complaining.
What do you think? Comment and let us know!
Pirates & Princesses (PNP) is an independent, opinionated fan-powered news blog that covers Disney and Universal Theme Parks, Themed Entertainment and related Pop Culture from a consumer's point of view. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of PNP, its editors, affiliates, sponsors or advertisers. PNP is an unofficial news source and has no connection to The Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal or any other company that we may cover.