BY PAMELA MCCLINTOCK | HollywoodReporter.Com
Troy Warren for CNT
The family film almost tied with fellow Pixar title ‘Soul’ in terms of viewership during its first weekend of play in late June.
Pixar’s latest offering Luca impressed in its debut on Disney+, according to Nielsen’s latest streaming ratings.
The family film easily topped the list of the top 10 most watched movies for the week of June 14-20 with a huge 1.57 billion minutes of viewing time.
That’s the equivalent of roughly 16.6 million full runs of the 95-minute movie. That means Luca almost matched fellow Pixar title Soul, which became the first feature film to top Nielsen’s overall weekly streaming rankings when debuting over the Christmas corridor. Soul, which runs 100 minutes, captured about 1.67 billion minutes of viewing time, or almost 16.7 million full runs.
Luca placed second behind Manifest on the overall list of any streaming offering, film or TV, for the week of June 14-20.
Both Soul and Luca were originally scheduled to open in theaters, but were sent straight to streaming in the U.S. and other countries where Disney+ is available because of the pandemic. There wasn’t an extra charge to watch either title.
Kevin Hart’s Fatherhood (877 million minutes) also did well in its Netflix debut to land at No. 2 on Nielsen’s top 10 movie chart. The Sony comedy was among numerous studios films acquired by the streamer during the pandemic.
Indie horror film The Devil Below, another new Netflix offering, placed No. 7 (146 million minutes).
Overall, Disney’s stable of family films dominated in claiming four of the top 10 slots on the movie chart. Soul was joined by holdovers Raya and the Last Dragon and Moana — both from Disney Animation Studios — and Disney Studios’ live-action Cruella. (Raya and Cruella first debuted on Disney+ Premier Access at an additional cost of $30 million.)
Netflix and Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead fell off the top 10 list in its fifth week.
Nielsen’s streaming ratings cover viewing on TV sets only and don’t include minutes watched on computers or mobile devices. The ratings only measure U.S. audiences, not those in other countries, and currently only include Amazon, Disney+, Hulu and Netflix in its rankings. (WarnerMedia doesn’t release viewership data for HBO Max.)
There’s little transparency when it comes to streaming numbers, unlike box office grosses. On July 11, Disney stunned Hollywood — and theater owners — when announcing that Black Widow earned $60 million in its debut on Disney+ Premier Access to put the movie’s hybrid box-office/digital opening at more than $218 million globally.
Nielsen’s top 10 streaming movies for the week of June 14-20 are below. Original streaming films are marked with an asterisk; titles receiving a simultaneous theatrical release in the U.S. and most international territories have two asterisks.
1. Luca* (Disney+), 1.57 billion
2. Fatherhood (2021)* (Netflix), 877 million
3. Raya and the Last Dragon** (Disney+), 576 million
4. Wish Dragon (Netflix), 530 million
5. Home (2015) (Netflix), 188 million
6. Moana (Disney+), 166 million
7. The Devil Below (Netflix), 146 million
8. Cruella** (Disney+), 118 million
9. The Mitchells vs. the Machines* (Netflix), 116 million
10. Dog Gone Trouble (Netflix), 106 million
In Other NEWS
