Disney Said “Turning Red” Had Record Debut, Nielsen Disagrees Big Time

Somebody has some serious explaining to do.

Disney and Samba TV had made major claims about Turning Red, with both companies making slightly different — though still record-breaking — claims about the movie’s start on Disney+. We now know those were not true. Given the financial ramifications of making false statements which investors may use to decide how they invest monies, there’s something fishy going on here.

From our prior reporting:

This follows on Samba TV’s claim that Turning Red by Pixar was Disney’s biggest streaming launch ever for North America. Raising some question as to the veracity of the Turning Red claim, Disney did not verify that achievement, instead calling Turning Red the biggest worldwide launch… without divulging what metric they’re using.

Thank you to all of the fans around the world who embraced their panda and made Disney and Pixar's #TurningRed the #1 film premiere on Disney+ around the world! pic.twitter.com/AUNsRVmD37

— Disney and Pixar's Turning Red (@PixarTurningRed) March 16, 2022

I guess in Disney’s defense, they could technically say that Turning Red was the #1 film premiere globally based on the hours watched in the first three days for a movie that had never been released in theaters and was not using hours watched in combination with domestic calculations… yadda yadda yadda. Here’s the bottom line, it’s misleading and it’s not true in any sense of the word true that I understand. Given that Samba TV’s claim was even more bold, I’m really starting to wonder what’s going on there.

From Scott Mendelsen of Forbes, a man who has been wrong so much that you can figure out what’s right by reading his articles in “opposite mode,” he managed to accidentally spill the beans:

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.

In other words, Turning Red had only 77% of Encanto’s opening on Disney+ and that is after people had already watched Encanto by the millions in theaters. It having played in theaters means that Encanto was less likely to pull those sorts of minutes. Turning Red was brand-new and it only grabbed 77% of Encanto’s viewership.

You want to take that sort of a drop and claim it is a record high instead? Fine, have at it. But see if I believe anything you write again — and others should be similarly wary. How much lower is it? Encanto had 1.8 billion minutes of viewership in its second week. How did Turning Red do in its second?

From Nielsen:

Now Scott Mendelsen takes this in an entirely different direction. That’s a topic for another day when we wade into what these numbers might mean. The topic for this article is that I feel misled and I understand why you might as well. It’s one thing to bolster your property with some out-of-context quotes… it’s another when the numbers just don’t seem to present anything close to what you’re stating.

Of course I could be wrong. But in this case, it sure feels like I’m not the one.

For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. And if you find this just as fishy as I do, feel free to drop a comment down below!