It’s hard to debut at the top spot for movies on streaming platforms and yet still fail. Somehow, Lightyear has managed it. Read to see why:
The viewership for Lightyear’s debut week on Disney+ is now here courtesy of Nielsen, and boy is there some interesting stuff in here to unpack.
Before we get to that, we need to look at what was going on the week before Lightyear’s debut. In the last week of July, Disney+ accumulated 715 million minutes of watch time with their top five movies. You can see that down below:
Movie Streaming Viewership for the Last Week of July
Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Watched (in millions)
| 1 | Netflix | The Gray Man (2022) | 1,362 | |
| 2 | Netflix | Purple Hearts (2022) | 508 | |
| 3 | Netflix | Sing 2 | 471 | |
| 4 | Netflix | The Sea Beast (2022) | 321 | |
| 5 | Disney+ | Encanto | 240 | |
| 6 | Netflix | Recurrence | 223 | |
| 7 | Disney+ | Moana | 194 | |
| 8 | Disney+ | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness | 161 | |
| 9 | Disney+ | Turning Red | 142 | |
| 10 | Disney+ | Zombies 3 | 139 |
However, once Lightyear came onto the scene, it appears that the movie cannibalized the watch time of those movies so that Netflix dominated everything else. One could make the argument that the Disney+ movies could have held steady and still wouldn’t have made the top ten list for whatever reason. However, consider that Men in Black 3 and Sing 2 are doing quite well… and no other Disney movie is up there. It could be that Lightyear came in and scooped up the families that are comfortable letting their kids watch Disney+ movies still.
Movie Streaming Viewership for the First Week of August
Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Watched (in millions)
| 1 | Disney+ | Lightyear | 1,306 | |
| 2 | Netflix | Uncharted (2022) | 1,014 | |
| 3 | Netflix | Purple Hearts (2022) | 828 | |
| 4 | Hulu | Prey (2022) | 585 | |
| 5 | Netflix | The Gray Man (2022) | 561 | |
| 6 | Netflix | Sing 2 | 386 | |
| 7 | Netflix | The Age Of Adaline | 378 | |
| 8 | Hulu | Tower Heist | 347 | |
| 9 | Netflix | Men In Black 3 | 333 | |
| 10 | Prime Video | Thirteen Lives | 323 |
And before you get too excited about those big numbers of Lightyear, it’s important to remember this:
Back in December of last year, Encanto came out on a Disney+ that supposedly had a much smaller domestic subscriber base. Yet that movie beat Lightyear in watch time by about a billion minutes. Encanto would then go on to grow, not shrink, over the next weeks. All of that meant that while Encanto was a box office flop, it was able to redeem itself somewhat as a movie that likely grew the Disney+ viewership.
All of that is to say that Lightyear isn’t just a flop at the box office, it’s also a flop on Disney+ and it likely did so by chewing up the viewership of other Disney+ movies families were already using to babysit.
Is it any shock that Disney never put out any statement bragging about Lightyear’s viewership or box office?
For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts!
I just hope that’s only Disney Pixar movie that include same sex kiss scene. But I have a feeling Strange World is going to include gay teen romance. I just hope next year we get better movies that are not political and woke like Pixar’s upcoming movie Elemental.
Per @EntStrategyGuy, and if you disagree, I recommend you debate with him
” On the kids side, Lightyear, which bombed in theaters, got a little over twenty million hours, which sort of shows the incredibly high floor of Disney films on Disney+. (Regardless of whether they go to theaters and get extra money or not)…
Luck, meanwhile, did not make the charts. There was some discussion on another thread about whether there’s missing data; to be clear, this film did not do well and is in the running for the “Dog Not Barking” of the year.”