‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Topped ‘Soul’ Over Christmas, But There’s A Catch

Wonder Woman 1984 had 35% more “viewed minutes” than Soul over Christmas weekend, but the DC Films sequel runs nearly an hour longer than the Pixar toon.

Nielsen is reporting that Wonder Woman 1984 was easily the most-watched movie or TV show over Christmas weekend (and the week of December 21-December 27), with HBO Max subscribers consuming 2.252 billion minutes of the Patty Jenkins-directed superhero sequel from December 25 to December 27. Comparatively, Disney and Pixar’s Soul, which debuted on Disney+ on Christmas Day as well, was watched for 1.669 billion minutes. So that’s, as Barack Obama said after the GOP took over the House and Senate in the 2010 midterms, a shellacking, right? Well, there’s a pretty big catch. You see, Wonder Woman 1984 is almost an hour longer than Soul.

Yes, Soul runs 109 minutes on Disney+, although that includes nine minutes of foreign-language credits that don’t count toward the film’s 100-minute running time. If you stopped watching the film right when the end credits began, you consumed 90 minutes of Soul for each full viewing. Wonder Woman 1984 runs 151 minutes not counting credits, and since I forgot to check when do the end credits start for the DC Films feature, I’ll guestimate that it’s around 143 minutes. So going by the 2.252 billion minutes metric, we can approximate that folks viewed Wonder Woman 1984 in full between 14.9 million and 15.7 million times.

Using the “between 90 minutes and 109 minutes” metric for Soul, the Pete Docter/Powers Kemp-directed animated melodrama was watched between 15.3 million and 18.5 million times over Christmas weekend. That’s not a huge difference, but it’s likely that the film with 34% more “minutes viewed” in the Nielsen ratings chart was actually seen in full fewer times. The “minutes viewed” is a fairer metric for streaming measurement than Netflix’s “two minutes is a full viewing for a movie or episodic series,” but there are still a few wrinkles. Come what may, we can guestimate that both Soul and Wonder Woman 1984 were viewed around 15 million times.

Among other wrinkles, if subscribers fast-forward the Wonder Woman 1984 end credits to get to the film’s mid-credit cookie, does that count under “minutes viewed?” If I watch, say, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 on a streaming platform and skip the terrible/needless “death of Peter Parker’s parents” prologue, do those eight minutes count as “minutes viewed?” And yes, that Wonder Woman 1984 ran 2.5 hours arguably made repeat viewings a more daunting “watch the whole movie” proposition compared to the 90-minute Soul. Comparatively, there is zero such confusion when a consumer makes an affirmative choice to buy movie ticket, purchase a DVD or rent a film on VOD.

But getting back to Wonder Woman 1984… If we’re using these “full viewing” estimates to guestimate a comparable domestic opening weekend, we’re looking at a domestic debut (with tickets costing on average $9.37) of between $140 million and $147 million. That’s on the lower end of “good enough” guestimates for the film’s domestic debut had it opened last June sans Covid. That would have been a bigger jump (between 35% and 42%) from Wonder Woman’s $103.5 million debut than Thor: The Dark World (+30%) and Iron Man 2 (+25%) but less than The Winter Soldier (+44%) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (+54%).  

We can only speculate how the film would have legged out post-debut last summer in “normal times.” Wonder Woman 1984 received mixed reviews and divisive (at least on social media) buzz, but some of its horrible post-debut theatrical legs ($37 million from a $16.7 million debut) was due to theaters being closed in much of the country and the film being available on HBO Max (for at least the first 30 days). Multipliers from ill-received releases on that early June weekend range from 2.34x (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows) to 2.0x (Dark Phoenix), suggesting a domestic finish between $280 million and $344 million.

The $200 million Gal Gadot/Chris Pine flick earned $37 million domestic from a $16.7 million domestic debut, a record-low multiplier for a Friday opener launching anywhere near Christmas, while earning $110 million (and counting) overseas for an over/under $148 million running cume. The domestic legs are ironic as Wonder Woman still holds the record for the leggiest “opened on a Friday” $100 million-plus opener (3.985 x $103.5 million = $412.5 million). And the choice to send the film to HBO Max only resulted in around 3.5 million new subscribers, which is fine if they all stick around for a year (3.5 million x $14.99 x 12 months = $630 million).

If streaming is really going to take over as a dominant form of filmed-entertainment consumption, we need some measurement of how well these films and TV shows perform, ideally something that is standard across all relevant platforms, vetted by third-party companies and (however possible) more indicative of showing how many people paid to watch a movie or a TV show or streamed the show or film in question just as you can track a movie ticket or VOD rental. The Nielsen figures are a good start, but we’re still in a situation where the number one movie of the weekend may have been viewed less in total than the number two movie.

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