‘Free Guy’ Soars On Disney+, Again Showing Streaming And Box Office Can Coexist

Inventing Anna was tops in SVOD ratings yet again.

In SVOD ratings, so says Nielsen, for the week of February 21 through February 27, Netflix’s Inventing Anna continued to show that Shonda Rhimes is worth the big bucks, chalking up another two billion minutes viewed in its second full week/third frame on the charts. The real-life con artist dramedy, starring Julia Alexander and Anna Chlumsky, has earned (so says Netflix) 511 million hours globally, ranking fourth among all English-language television shows behind the first season of Rhimes’ Bridgerton, the third season of Stranger Things and the first season of The Witcher. Bridgerton season two drops this morning. If all goes well then Rhimes will have three of Netflix’s top five English language seasons all to herself, at least until Stranger Things season four drops on May 27.

If you’ll allow me an apples-to-oranges comparison, Rhimes having two hugely-watched Netflix shows in two widely different genres is akin to James Wan and James Cameron. Sure, there are directors with multiple $1 billion-plus global grossers (like the Russo’ Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame), but only Wan has two (Aquaman and Furious 7) in different franchises for different studios and Cameron has two non-sequels (Titanic and Avatar) that have each earned $2 billion. So, yes, all due respect to Ryan Murphy and Kenya Barris, Rhimes is the one who is worth “all the money,” just as Sandra Bullock has become Netflix’s singular movie star with two of the top five most-watched movies with two wildly disparate titles (Bird Box and The Unforgivable).

Ryan Reynolds is excelling on Netflix and Disney+.

Speaking of bankable Netflix movie stars, Ryan Reynolds’ The Adam Project earned another 85 million hours globally, down just 8% from its 92 million-hour “opening weekend.” Would all parties have preferred that the film’s viewership go up as did Don’t Look Up? Sure, but around 177 million hours in ten days puts it just below the top ten “all-time” list for English-language movies, and even a 44% drop (not guaranteed but humor me) will leave the film with 215 million hours at the end of day seventeen to put it in fifth place just above Bullock’s The Unforgivable. Okay, so Bullock will soon only have two of the top six movies, while Reynolds will have the prize holder (Red Notice) and a film likely to finish in the top five.

We can argue that Reynolds’ four-quadrant, violence-lite, kid-friendly action comedies are closer to his stock genre, but that’s still star power. Likewise, Free Guy debuted on Disney+ on the weekend of February 23 where it racked up 1.025 billion domestic minutes (so says Nielsen). Yes, I’m bouncing back and forth between Nielsen’s “one month ago” ratings and Netflix’s own “last week” stats. Regardless, Free Guy enjoyed a full theatrical run where it earned $126 million domestic and $332 million worldwide on an over/under $115 million budget. It still nabbed minutes comparable to the “free to Disney+” debut weekend of Raya and the Last Dragon (1.078 billion), Jungle Cruise, Cruella (815 million), and Shang-Chi (1.072 billion). Sure, that’s well below the 2.2 billion minutes logged on opening weekend by Encanto, but they can’t all be The Greatest Showman.

Encanto could have been just as popular on Disney+ after a conventional theatrical release.

Encanto nabbed its tenth straight frame in terms of over one billion minutes viewed, showing the obvious repeat viewership power of a great toon with new/catchy songs. I still maintain that Encanto could have been just as big on Disney+ after a 60 or 90-day window, specifically without Disney’s leadership treating the film as a streaming-centric feature, while first earning (if Sing 2 can gross $377 million) $450 million to $650 million worldwide. Disney+ viewership may be at a place not unlike Netflix, where the subscriber base is large enough to earn big debuts for big premieres. A huge swath of the subscribers just watches whatever the week’s big movie or (in the case of Netflix) television show happens to be. Like network television, it’s less “I must see this movie” and more “What’s on Netflix this weekend?”

Disney+ viewership for Free Guy didn’t suffer from its old-school theatrical run, and Disney got its first *earned* new live-action franchise (2.9x its budget in global theatrical revenue) since National Treasure in 2004. The upside to Encanto’s massive viewership, along with obviously Pixar’s Soul, Luca and Turning Red, is that the films play on terrain otherwise mostly occupied by Netflix (with half Netflix’s subscriber base) and makes Disney+ look like a Wall Street-friendly service. The downside is that Disney is quickly teaching their fanbase to expect the biggest-budget movies and television shows at home “for free” in as little as 30 days. I would argue the success of Free Guy in theaters and now on Disney+ shows Disney doesn’t have to choose between theatrical and streaming, and that theatrical success can still lead to top-tier Disney+ viewership.