Film - Mad About the Streaming Ratings
This week we had two major straight-to-streaming films. Usually, that means that an Apple TV+ or Amazon or Netflix film skipped theaters (even though it probably should have gone to theaters). But in a twist, Peacock/Universal got back in on the straight-to-streaming action.
I speak of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, another installment in the Bridget Jones series, a well-loved film, certainly loved enough that it’s made $113 million globally as of this writing (on a reported $50 million budget).
On streaming? Well, it hasn’t done great. To be honest, I’m calling this my “Miss of the Week” just based on potential. It missed the Nielsen and Samba TV charts entirely and only made Luminate for one week at 5.0 million hours.
Five million hours on Luminate is right at my threshold for “miss or not”, as a lot of streaming films end up with four to five million hours viewed. But it’s even worse if a film drops off after only a single week on the charts. Based on the cast and franchise, this should have done better.
Apple TV+’s latest big budget film—The Gorge starring Miles Teller and Anya-Taylor Joy in a monster/sci-fi/action flick—also made the Luminate charts. At 13.8 million hours, I’d say that did well for Apple TV+, and it actually topped the most recently released Netflix films! On Nielsen, it had 6.7 million hours, which is good for Apple TV+, but middling for everyone else, but at least it made the charts:
See? Not bad for an Apple TV+ film. Of course, in the wide range of all streaming films, that’s just “fine”. On Samba TV, for example, The Gorge sat behind Aftermath and La Dolce Villa (see next section):
The problem for the “go to theaters” crowd right now is that outside of tentpole films, lots of originals aren’t working. So Apple TV+ could say, “Hey, we tried with Argylle last year and got a lot of bad headlines for our efforts, so The Gorge isn’t going to theaters.” I call this “The Argylle Treatment”, and while I disagree with that logic, I think Apple really does care. That said, if The Gorge wouldn’t make its money back with a theatrical run, it’s not like 6.7 million hours on Nielsen will earn its keep either, especially since most people have no idea what The Gorge is. (Though, to its credit, it does have over 90K IMDb reviews already, with a 6.7.)
That logic doesn’t apply to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. I mean, it’s a (hopefully) affordably made romcom. It shouldn’t need a nine-figure opening to justify its budget, and a theatrical release would actually help its streaming performance, unlike now, where this film kind of disappeared. I bet a lot of customers have no idea that this film exists.
