‘Turning Red’ Debuts Below ‘Encanto’ While ‘Dropout’ Drops Out Of Top 10

Nielsen’s SVOD ratings for March 7 through March 13 offered up two comparatively strong debuts for two big streaming premieres. Netflix’s The Adam Project, which logged 92 million hours in its global debut, notched 1.36 billion minutes from the televisions and related devices measured by Nielsen, translating to around 13.6 million households viewing the 105-minute Ryan Reynolds-led sci-fi adventure in its “opening weekend.” The film currently ranks fifth globally among Netflix’s movies, behind only Extraction, Bird Box, Don’t Look Up and Red Notice. Reynolds has three films in the top ten along with 6 Underground while Sandra Bullock has two (Bird Box and The Unforgivable) meaning that Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson should back a dump truck worth of untraceable bearer bonds onto her driveway to convince Bullock to star in Red Notice 2.

More interesting was the chart-topping debut of Pixar’s Turning Red on Disney+. The intended-for-theatrical coming-of-age comedy earned 1.7 billion minutes in its opening weekend. That translates to around 18 million household viewings of the 100-minute flick, a genuinely successful launch that again disputes the notion that the film was controversial because a few online critics didn’t find it “relatable” or because online trolls used it as phase one in what has turned into a full-blown “GOP versus Disney” culture war. Sure, you’ll find folks posting on social media in horror about having to discuss girls going through puberty, girls having crushes on boy bands and girls standing up to their traditionalist parents, but they are a very loud and very small minority. Not everyone liked Turning Red, but most regular viewers thought it was “fine, whatever.”

Alas, since Disney didn’t give the film a proper global theatrical release, the various variables that could be used to combat the manufactured controversies were not available. We couldn’t point to robust domestic box office grosses, which we otherwise might have expected in an environment where even Illumination’s Sing 2 can earn $161 million domestic and $395 million worldwide. We couldn’t point to a high Cinemascore grade, which would poll opening night audiences who willfully went to the theater and watched the whole movie while *not* playing on their phone or excerpting out-of-context scenes for “point-and-laugh” Twitter clout. You didn’t have Rotten Tomatoes’ verified user score, since there were no tickets bought through Fandango, there was a rush of review bombing that initially dragged the film’s audience score down to 66%.

While 1.7 billion minutes is a terrific debut, it was below the 2.2 billion-minute debut of Encanto over Christmas weekend. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that a “not in theaters” Disney+ animated film had a smaller debut frame than the one that played theatrically for 31 days before arriving at home. Sure, Encanto is a musical whose songs arguably fueled the high rewatch rate (and whose “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” became Disney’s biggest show tune since Frozen’s “Let It Go”). But, with the caveat that this is just the first three days, the mild discrepancy further argues that films that play in theaters perform better on most streaming platforms than those which do not. Would giving Turning Red even 30 days in theaters first have resulted in an even bigger streaming debut?

Both Shang-Chi and Free Guy debuted with just over 1 billion minutes following conventional theatrical windows ($430 million and $331 million respectively), while Eternals (which runs 157 minutes) debuted in early January with 1.437 billion minutes despite a conventional ($400 million-plus global) theatrical run. Maybe that’s why the recent Lightyear trailer, which aired during the Oscars, explicitly reaffirmed the “only in theaters” designation. If Disney+ has a subscriber base large enough to give “big” viewership to whatever their “big” series (a Star Wars show or MCU miniseries) or movie (Jungle Cruise or Cruella) happens to be, then a theatrical release does little to no damage to a film’s streaming prospects, even if it disappoints theatrically. If it soars like Shang-Chi, super. If it underwhelms like Eternals, Disney can still brag about streaming viewership in a few months.

Meanwhile, The Dropout spent one week in Nielsen’s top ten streaming programs, earning 255 million minutes from three episodes. That’s around 1.7 million households watching all three episodes of the terrific Amanda Seyfried-as-Elizabeth Holmes miniseries. The show, which ended last night, is easily the best of the various real-life scammer/recent true-life scandal miniseries shows. However, th discrepancy between it (along with Impeachment, WeCrashed, Pam & Tommy, Super Pumped, etc.) and Inventing Anna (812 million minutes in week four and 512 million hours globally in 28 days) again argues that the Netflix one was a huge hit because it was on Netflix and not because audiences desperately crave ten-hour adaptations of You’re Wrong About episodes. Offhand, the “ripped from the headlines” Holmes-inspired Law & Order nabbed 4.3 million household viewers on old-school network television.