I had been hearing that The Book of Boba Fett was not doing as well in streaming numbers as The Walt Disney Company would like. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to get data out of Disney about Disney+ viewership numbers, and I didn’t want to do an article on low interest unless I had something to pin it on. After all, what if my sources were wrong on this one? Did I really want to jump out ahead of everyone only to be proven wrong in a couple of months? And what if The Book of Boba Fett has a phenomenal second episode that reverses everything? Nobody wants to write something that is outdated in a few days — these things live on forever through search engines.
The Book Of Boba Fett
Stranger In A Strange Land pic.twitter.com/em3bxmf2z1— 💭 (@BobaThinker) January 1, 2022
Then an industry acquaintance of mine made a suggestion that I could no longer ignore. She said for me to do a Google Trends comparison of Spider-Man No Way Home and The Book of Boba Fett over the last seven days. I protested though… Spider-Man will have plenty of searches just from people trying to find tickets, while The Book of Boba Fett doesn’t have the same internet dynamic. “Add Matrix Resurrections,” she said.
Hmmm…
There’s a point, and it’s a good one. Matrix Resurrections is a massive flop; relatively nobody is trying to find tickets to see that movie in theaters. You would also think that it’s box office success correlates with HBO Max success. Disney, meanwhile, probably thought it had the hottest streaming content on the planet with The Book of Boba Fett. It had the hottest property with The Mandalorian, so why not with this spin-off, right? So good enough, I decided to see what the internet interest was with the three supposedly biggest media content out there.
And…
“Holy cow,” I couldn’t believe it. Even factoring in that The Matrix has some people somewhere searching for tickets, this was crazy. The middle-of-the-night drop-offs when nobody is searching anything still had The Matrix Resurrections outperforming The Book of Boba Fett by more than double. Can it be that The Book of Boba Fett is even less successful than my contacts were suggesting? Have people truly turned off the television when it comes to Disney+ and Star Wars content?
I still can’t believe what I’m seeing with Google Trends, and I still can’t endorse it. Surely there must be some mistake. So I tried one more way to see if I was missing something. I decided to put in Encanto. I know that it has been doing much better on Disney+ than at the box office, but nobody is buying tickets for it… so there aren’t any searches for that reason inflating the Google Trends statistics. And it’s also already out for more than a month, so people aren’t trying to look up its reviews. The buzz should have died down, and ultimately it’s a movie that lost money at the box office. Surely, The Book of Boba Fett will be trouncing Encanto.
Encanto v The Book of Boba Fett Results
It turned out that Encanto is beating The Book of Boba Fett in internet buzz by about 7.5x. That’s beyond anything that I would put out there unless it was staring me right in the face. It’s too ridiculous. And yet there it is. Now I’m left to wonder… is it real?
If these statistics and insider sources are right, The Book of Boba Fett is heading out of the gate as an abject failure of monumental proportions. It’s beyond The Matrix Resurrections for crying out loud. Can the series turn around? Absolutely. But if these first signs are correct (and I still can’t get myself to believe them), then this is horrific for the future of Star Wars as Disney currently has it conceived. I’m being honest, I’m flabbergasted. I thought it would come in lower than The Mandalorian, even half as popular, but this is just beyond anything I would have guessed.
So let me know what you think. Is this real? Are the views tanking this hard? What the heck is going on? And remember, I’m just as shocked as the next person on this one.
Update 2:39 PM EST, January 4th, 2022:
Samba TV has now confirmed that The Matrix Resurrections did beat The Book of Boba Fett. In their five-day premieres, The Matrix Resurrections gained 2.8 million views. The Book of Boba Fett only had 1.7 million.
Star Wars has two more episodes of Book of Boba Fett before I throw in the towel and cancel Disney+ again. There’s zero buzz on this show online and most people seem pretty disappointed. Signing Kennedy up again was a HUGE mistake. Star Wars needed a HARD turnaround and change the direction away from the Sequel Trilogy, but that seems to not be happening. Instead they’re re-writing classic characters again which will just turn off more fans. It will take a new Lucasfilm president and a major purge at Lucasfilm to replace the ‘activists’ before I really have any interest again.
Well said, mate… You’ve got to STOP the haemorrhaging of all changes to the mythological aspects that made the world created by George Lucas essentially Star Wars.
One thing I learned when I owned an internet commerce site was searches don’t equal sales. Still, the Book of Boba Fett bored me. I really don’t care about the next episode. I always waited eagerly for the Mandalorian. The Book of Boba Fett just doesn’t have the IT factor that the Mandalorian did.
Agreed, though I’ve worked extensively on learning how to use comparative statistics to help derive general trends. That’s why I’m not fully on board with the idea that The Book of Boba Fett is a disaster for viewership. But when I saw that it’s being outpaced more than seven-times-over by Encanto… that’s a story no matter how hard I try to think there’s something missing. I like to be ahead of the curve, not following along with the access media, even when the curve throws me for a loop.
Could it be you’re using the wrong search term? I too have trouble believing the show is doing THAT bad. Would just “Boba Fett” or “Boba Fett Disney” make more sense?
I checked that as well. I ran different variant search terms and it was consistent.
Disney feels like an engineering experiment.
Build me a beautiful bridge or an impenetrable brand. Add some Art Deco features or a massive fan base. Let’s save some money or change culture. Maybe we can remove some support or fire people for wrong think. We should blow up the foundation or retell the same story with different character names (Every Marvel movie now, Boba Fett is The Mandalorian, Encanto or Moana… what’s the difference?)
Wait! The bridge collapsed… How?
I think the biggest issue for Disney is that they still haven’t rectified their cardinal sin. They spent YEARS insulting their fan base. I think we were willing to swallow a lot, but then Jon and Dave finally gave us what we wanted – the REAL Luke Skywalker. For a brief moment in time, it felt like maybe Disney was going to take steps to right the ship.
Then they fired Gina.
That was the last straw for a lot of us. I cancelled my Disney+ subscription on the spot. I’ve continued to watch the various shows while visiting other friends who have maintained their subscriptions, and I support everything that Jon and Dave are doing.
But Disney has a problem far bigger than they’re willing to admit to. They’re hoping they can just wink and nod at us and signal privately that John and Dave are creatively in control and Kathleen is not really creatively involved in Star Wars – but they haven’t come out and said that. They haven’t apologized to Gina. They haven’t apologized to us.
They assumed that we would endure any amount of abuse and continue to open our wallets to anything that says “Star Wars” on it.
While I absolutely want to support everything Jon and Dave are doing (including Book of Boba Fett!), I’m having a hard time justifying giving Disney another dime until they ACTUALLY issue SOME form of apology and take HARD, CONCRETE steps to fix what they screwed up.
I can already hear people saying “It’ll never happen.” Probably not. But if it doesn’t, wallets are going to remain closed. The only way for them to fix their problems is to act like adults and issue some serious mea culpas.
Disney eventually will make it right. But Boba Fett isn’t going to fix it.
For the general public Boba Fett is retelling The Mandalorian. Same look and same location.
For Star Wars fans, this isn’t Boba Fett. This character is taking over something, and he can’t keep his helmet on. Where is the Bounty Hunting?
Any spinoff should have been a non-Mandalorian Character. Cheers didn’t spin-off Woody at a different Bar. Cheers gave us Frasier.
I wonder if the fact that Disney+ only drops one episode per week rather than the entire season at once has anything to do with it. I don’t plan on starting the show until the entire season is available, and I’m sure I’m not the only one doing that.
I don’t know… that is odd. I will say, however, that there was a lot more negative feedback after the first episode, in the circles I run in. I actually really enjoyed the first episode. I watched it with my family the first time, heard the negatives/positives, then watched it a 2nd time in the theater room, and I loved it even more than the first time.
The only thing I can think of is that the negative stories about Disney/Star Wars are really taking a toll on the fanbase. We’ve been getting slapped in the face by Disney for years, now… YEARS. They’ve been force-feeding us trash, then deliver with Mandalorian, only to spit that in our face by firing Carano…
Add in the tragedy that is the Starcruiser… Perhaps fans are so soured by everything, they just want to send a very strong message, like they did with Solo. They can fan service all they want, but until Kennedy is gone and we see a course correction, asap, Disney/Lucasfilm is going to get monetarily punished.
Like I said… I loved the first episode. I’ve been waiting for a Boba Fett series or movie for a very long time, as he’s one of my favorite characters from the franchise, but I get it… and honestly, I support the fans for not monetarily supporting these companies, in an effort to send a strong message.
Cant’ lie…I watched that last scene of Luke returning in the Mandalorian…like 25 times. It was fantastic to see. I was SO psyched for the potential of what was to come. Disney was finally “Getting it”.
Then they fired Gina Carano. In such a deplorable, made-up, false, political way. If a company can get away with that type of treatment of someone…it can happen to any of us.
So, my interest in The Book Of Boba Fett dropped at least in half because of this. Now when I watched it I feel like “Yeah, whatever Disney”. That company couldn’t have shot itself in the foot in any bigger fashion. From the utmost highs with Luke, to the lows with firing Carano.
There’s another aspect to the firing of Gina that I think should be paid attention to as well – the potential that that the anonymous statement to the trades wasn’t authorized. I’m sure most of us believe that Kennedy probably unofficially sanctioned the release, but I think it’s interesting that the “non-contract-renewal” statement was made anonymously to the trades, and caught EVERYBODY by surprise.
Either Kathleen was throwing a tantrum because she had been shown up so massively by a TV show, or a low-level functionary did the same (either with her blessing or going off the reservation.)
Either way – Disney then supported the line given in the trade. I have no doubt they were frustrated with Gina, especially after hearing Ginas side of it in the Daily Wire interview. The struggle session they wanted her to go through is creepy, especially when you consider what they tolerate out of people like Pedro or Hal Hickel.
But this hit Disney+ HARD – the fact that Gina is STILL being cited as the reason we’re not subscribing, and that their High Republic videos still get commented into oblivion shows what a massive blunder this is.
All Disney had to do was contradict the report and fire the functionary. Why they ever took this route is beyond me. It’s costing them literally millions of dollars, every month.